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Nov. 24, 1997 - Art Bell

03:13:45

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Capt. Wm. Donaldson - TWA Flight 800 Investigation. Dr. Joseph Gold - Cancer Treatments

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59:16

william donaldson

01:15:45

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning, wherever you may be.
		And wherever you may be, I say you should brace yourself for what is coming this night.
		As you all know, Kathy Keaton Guccioni has passed on.
		We have interviewed Bob Guccioni now twice, the late Kathy Keaton Guccione once, and throughout, at least throughout all of that, references to Dr. Gold every time we talk about hydrazine sulfate.
		And so, I thought in the first hour, it might be appropriate to have Dr. Gold on and talk about this inexpensive cancer treatment that seems like it just can't get legs and walk into people's lives who have received a generally fatal prognosis with stage four cancers and that sort of thing.
		And so we're going to talk to Dr. Gold and find out the efficacy and the truth as much as we can about hydrazine sulfate.
		In the beginning of the second hour, I have not chimed in really on Flight 800, but last week the CIA released a sort of cartoon of what they imagined went on with Flight 800.
		The FBI stepped out of the investigation, said it was an accident.
		And I am going to bring to you tonight the definitive expert on Flight 800, William Bill Donaldson.
		I'll tell you about his background.
		It is extensive with aircraft and safety.
		Many, many years in the military, as well as two eyewitnesses to what occurred on Long Island that fateful night.
		So I am finally going to do a show on Flight 800, and I suggest you buckle in because you're going to hear things that you have not heard to date.
		All right, just one more item before we go to Dr. Gold, and that is we have a new member of our family.
		You may have heard me speak of it.
		Friday.
		And then again, Sunday on Dreamland.
		And some subhuman being came and dumped this dog near my home.
		Just dumped it.
		It was starved to death.
		Really starved with a bunch of bruises on its legs.
		And so it looks like we have a new member of the family.
		Now, I'm not exactly sure what kind of dog we've got.
		It looks like it's got at least part pit bull in it.
		She's a sweetie, just a lover.
		And she's, I don't know, four to six months, something like that.
		And you guys know me.
		I'm Cat Person.
		I'm last person to probably have a dog, but I've got a dog.
		Anyway, Keith Rowland came out over the weekend, my webmaster, and snapped a couple of digital photographs of our new little girl.
		And we're having a name that dog contest.
		And I would like to add to that, please identify that dog.
		What kind of dog is she?
		Is anybody able to definitively...
		I think she's a mix of some kind.
		There are photographs on the website right now at www.artbell.com.
		And I will tell you more about her as time goes on.
		Now, however, we're going to the head of the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute and the nation's leading researcher of the underline this word inexpensive drug hydrazine sulfate.
		He is Dr. Joseph Gold.
		Doctor, welcome to the program.
		Thank you, Richard.
		Dr. Gold, I, of course, have followed the very sad story of the late Kathy Keaton Guccione.
		I had Bob Guccione on first.
		Then, as a matter of fact, I had Kathy on the air with me.
		And she was jubilant about how things were going.
		Then, of course, she went in for an operation, and she didn't come out.
		And before we get into hydrazine sulfate, can you give us a medical idea of what killed Kathy Keaton Guccione?
unidentified		Well, she had an obstruction in her small intestine, and she had a surgical operation for this, and she never regained consciousness from that operation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it directly related to cancer tumor growth, or was it scar tissue, or what were they doing?
unidentified		Well, I think it was scar tissue that was indirectly related to the cancer growth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		But certainly not a cause for her demise.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, she was convinced that hydrazine sulfate had already extended her life greatly, that the tumors that she had were either had stopped growing or that she was in some sort of remission.
		And so we've heard a great deal about hydrazine sulfate.
		What is hydrazine sulfate?
		What does it do?
		And why is it good for treating cancer, late stage particularly?
unidentified		Well, hydrazine sulfate is a simple chemical, the sulfate salt of the base hydrazine.
		What it does is stop the wasting of normal energy from the body.
		And what that does is stop weight loss.
		And what that weight loss stops is a condition known as cachexia, the progressive debilitation and weakening of the body.
		And that cachexia is important because it accounts for upwards of 70% of all cancer deaths.
		And the rationale is quite simple.
		You stop cachexia, you're going to stop a lot of cancer deaths, and you're going to cause people to live with a high quality of life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, cachexia is the wasting away of a person.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, caused by their not eating, caused by what?
unidentified		Caused by the wasting art of chemical energy.
		There's a really complicated scientific rationale behind it.
		And what hydrazine sulfate does in the liver chiefly is stop the conversion of small molecules to sugar that takes place in the body.
		That costs the body a lot of energy.
		And that energy cost is what we call host energy wasting.
		You stop that, you stop weight loss, and you stop cachexia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How did you discover this use of hydrazine sulfate?
unidentified		It's a frequently asked question.
		I was the first to publish in a medical journal in 1968 the probable stepwise biochemical sequence of cachexia.
		Until that time, the cachexia was but a descriptive term.
		So I indicated at what enzymic system in the liver, if you could stop that enzyme, you'll stop cachexia.
		And about a year later, it became known that hydrazine sulfate interfered with that enzyme system.
		And that piece of research had nothing to do with cancer at all.
		But when I heard about it, I immediately rushed back to Syracuse, to our laboratories, and tested it with our tumor-bearing rats and mice and asked our colleagues at other places to test too.
		And within two to three weeks, we all got the same answer, that hydrazine sulfate not only inhibited cachexia, but caused tumor inhibition as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Tumor regression.
		So at this point, it's hallelujah.
		It may not be the complete answer, certainly, to cancer, but it's hallelujah.
unidentified		Well, when you say at this point, what point do you mean?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		at the point i think that the track well at the point certainly where you saw tumors regressing there must have been a light bulb and uh...
unidentified		well But it took five more years of animal research before the first human being received it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my goodness.
unidentified		So yes, there's a lot of work that went into this.
unidentified		And at every point along the way, we published our results in peer-reviewed medical journals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		all right arm in what percentage of Well, first of all, any drug is first tested in late stage, but hydrazine now has been tested quite a while, and it's being used in earlier stages as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
unidentified		How many people?
		Sure.
		Well, let's put it this way.
		There are about 600,000 deaths from cancer each year in the United States alone.
		So it's at least double that incidence of people learning that they're getting cancer.
		And some people learn they have cancer in its very advanced stages or stage four when they learn about it, such as cancer of the pancreas.
		In Kathy Keaton's case, she learned about breast cancer when it was already stage four, that is, metastasized all throughout her body.
		So a lot of people do learn that they have cancer, not in the earliest stages, unfortunately, but in the latest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So there are, at any given time, well over a million people out there, many, many, many of whom are going to be listening to us this morning with cancer.
		And I want to be very careful not to give them false hope.
		That's very important.
		So I will just directly ask you about the efficacy of this drug.
		How confident are you when you speak about what it can do, particularly in late stage and then even better early stage?
		How confident are you?
unidentified		I'm very confident by virtue of the published controlled clinical trials all over the world, with one exception, and I'll get to that.
		But every controlled clinical trial that has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals has shown the drug to be both effective and safe.
		The only trials, clinical trials, that have not shown the drug to be effective are those done by our own National Cancer Institute, which proved to be tainted.
		That is, they used tranquilizers with a test drug with hydrazine sulfate.
		And they knew that tranquilizers were incompatible with the drug.
		That is, it would render it useless and make the patient sicker.
		When they first published their results three years ago, they denied, they concealed the use of hydrazine because they knew it was incompatible, or tranquilizers.
		But under an investigation by the General Accounting Office, they were forced to publish a year later that they indeed used tranquilizers in 94% of their patients.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, In your opinion, rendering their study totally invalid?
unidentified		Oh, totally invalid.
		It's been known for 25 years that tranquilizers are incompatible with hydrazine sulfate.
		And we, in fact, we made sure that they knew it and understood where we were coming from because before their studies commenced, we wrote to every study section head, every person at the NCI, at every echelon, saying that if they used tranquilizers, they were going to get negative studies.
		This was before the studies began.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Backing up just a little bit, if I'm a cancer patient, doctor, and I'm using hydrazine sulfate and I'm complying with the necessary regimen that you must do to have this drug work, how much money is it going to cost me per month to treat myself?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, week, month, whatever.
unidentified		The institute, the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute, does not sell or distribute hydrazine sulfate, but it could be gotten around the country from other places.
		It depends how much you pay.
		But you're going to pay very little.
		Let's put it this way.
		If your physician or a qualified scientist were to go out and buy a pound jar of high-purity hydrazine sulfate from a fine biochemical house, and there are a lot around, you might pay $15 or $25 for it, and in that amount there are 100,000 clinical doses.
		So the material is virtually dirt cheap, and it's made by the car load for a myriad industrial purposes.
		The only reason that it's used in cancer is that it has this quality of inhibiting a certain enzyme in the liver.
		The name of the enzyme is TEP carboxykinase, but it is used for a myriad of other industrial purposes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so that the audience might understand, Doctor, traditional treatments for cancer, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How would you imagine or do you know hydrazine sulfate in any stage of cancer would compare when we're talking about remissions or whatever stage of helping a cancer patient, how would you compare hydrazine sulfate's use to radiation, chemotherapy, whatever?
unidentified		Well, I would say that hydrazine, there's a two-part answer to that question.
		Hydrazine by itself, in about 50% of the patients, induces nothing.
		There's no benefit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No benefit.
unidentified		In the remaining 50% of the patients, some can have symptomatic relief for two months or longer.
		Some will see their tumors shrink, and some will be cured outright.
		When I say cure, I mean more than 10 years without a recurrence.
		Now, hydrazine sulfate, the other part of that question is hydrazine sulfate is useful, therefore, in itself, very much so.
		However, it can interact favorably with chemotherapy, and with radiation therapy is sensational.
		With radiation therapy and hydrazine sulfate used together, the two drugs, the two modalities of treatment, are what we call synergistic.
		That means 1 plus 1 equals 100.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, patients are not forced to sit out there and choose between A, B, or C. They can take A and C if they wish, or B and C if they wish, safely, medically.
unidentified		Absolutely.
unidentified		The doctors treating them should explain that to them as part of their informed consent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
		Now, that was something that I did not understand previously about hydrazine sulfate.
		Basically, can you tell me, other than tranquilizers, what is the regimen that somebody must adhere to who takes, who tries hydrazine sulfate, foods, that sort of thing?
unidentified		Okay, first of all, Art, this shouldn't be done by people by themselves.
unidentified		It's just done under a doctor's or a qualified health professional's care.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
unidentified		But hydrazine sulfate, and I hate to get technical, but just for a moment, hydrazine sulfate is what we call an MAO inhibitor, monoamine oxidase inhibitor.
		And you can't take certain drugs or eat certain foods with it.
		The drugs are these.
		You can't have sleeping pills or sedatives.
		You can't have tranquilizers.
		It doesn't matter what the tranquilizer is used for, to tranquilize you or for nausea.
		You can't have alcoholic beverages.
		And you can't have antidepressants.
		Those four classes of drugs are out.
		With foods now, you can't have foods high in a substance called tyramine.
		These are cheeses of all kinds, except cottage cheese and cream cheese.
		That means a person can't eat pizzas.
		No raisins.
		No cured meats.
		No fermented foods such as yogurt or fermented tofu.
		It's called miso.
		No liver.
		No vitamin B6, and no brewer's yeast tablets.
		You can have breads and cakes with yeast, but no brewer's yeast tablets per se.
		Those are the main offenders, and if a person stays away from those offenders, they'll have a much better Chance for the drug to work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We're going to take a break here at the bottom of the hour, Doctor.
		So relax for a few moments.
		When we come back, if what Dr. Gold, who heads the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute, is saying, if what he is saying is true, then there is just his presentation demands an answer from the National Cancer Institute,
		from anybody who would have anything to do with getting this drug on the market, getting it, well, actually, it is on the market, I guess, but as a cancer drug, and noticed by doctors and pharmacology labs.
		We'll talk about that when we come back.
		is close to close there.
unidentified		And now, back to the best of Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, once again, Dr. Joseph Gold, who is head of the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute and our nation's leading researcher of the inexpensive drug hydrazine sulfate, which works well by itself and even better with conventional treatments or in connection with conventional treatments.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So now the question is, Doctor, why has America's cancer researchers and pharmaceutical companies and physicians, why have they not embraced this as a tremendous assist to keeping people alive?
unidentified		Well, many have, but let me say this, that the way a drug gets used commonly in the United States is for a pharmaceutical company to sponsor it through the FDA.
		And no end of pharmaceutical companies have wanted to do so over the last 10 years, very large ones and not so large ones alike.
		The moment, however, they get to the National Cancer Institute, that's the end of their interest.
		And we've seen that happen with ever so many pharmaceutical companies.
		Now, the National Cancer Institute is our federal government, and they have been the chief adversary of hydrazine sulfate in writing for the last 20 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
unidentified		Why is the key $64,000 question?
		I could say that the drug was developed by a very small institute then on a small budget.
		I could say hydrazine sulfate is the first general cancer drug that can be used on all types of cancer and at all stages.
		It's not so-called tumor-specific.
		I could say it's very, very inexpensive.
		I could say that it's very free from side effects.
		But all those things together don't go for a successful drug.
		And it surprised me early on, 20 years ago, and my colleagues kept telling me for years and years, well, the chief reason that the hydrazine is encountering trouble is because it's so inexpensive.
		And I'd answer my colleagues go on, I'd say, there isn't a doctor on this planet who would withhold an effective cancer drug from his patient just because it's cheap.
		But in the last seven, eight years, I'm sure that that's the chief reason.
		The drug is too inexpensive.
		However, it's not that a pharmaceutical company couldn't make money from it.
		It could because the market is so very, very wide, even though the drug is cheap.
		The problem is that the National Cancer Institute and those who have headed it, our national cancer leadership, has been against this drug.
		They don't want to see it fly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, the National Cancer Institute conducted tests that you regard as absolutely flawed.
		It's my understanding the GAO investigated the National Cancer Institute's testing and found basically that it was okay.
		And then somehow you got somebody to investigate the GAO's investigation and you got a different answer.
		Who did that?
unidentified		The person who did that was the chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittees on Investigations.
		But let's back up a little.
		When the GAO investigated this, at first, they caused the National Cancer Institute to publish a year later an addendum to their three negative studies saying that they did indeed use tranquilizers with their hydrazine.
		And also, they failed to keep track of concurrent medications.
		Something in their original studies the NCI said that they did do.
		You understand?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		But when the final report of the GAO, the published report came out, it exonerated the NCI.
		It said that their studies weren't flawed.
		Now that's double talk.
		One year they say it is flawed and they cause the NCI to write it in a journal.
		The next year they publish that the studies weren't flawed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well interestingly then, at that first moment when they said the studies were flawed, why wasn't there an immediate move to do more studies under properly controlled conditions?
unidentified		Well the NCI admitted in the journal when they published that they did use incompatible agents.
unidentified		They did use tranquilizers in 94% of their patients.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got you there.
unidentified		Then they said they don't consider that a flawed study.
		And that, you understand?
		So it was apparent that the deal was with the GAO and the NCI that they would publish this admission and then the GAO would exonerate them.
		Only what this chief counsel on the subcommittee found amazingly enough, and he published it in a letter dated just November 5th of this year, just a few weeks ago, was that the person who was in charge of that GAO study apparently was let go from the investigation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		He wrote what's called a final draft report.
		And the final draft report was a scathing criticism of the NCI.
		And they had to send a copy to the NCI, and within one week, the NCI somehow put pressure on the GAO to turn this draft report 180 degrees around and say things that were never in it.
		So it's a real scandal that has emerged.
		And at the same time, the person who originally was head of the GAS investigation, he is now retired.
		I believe he's only in his 40s, which is unheard of.
		And we wonder if there is a connection there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me say something to you that I said to Bob Guccioni, and maybe you can react to it.
		Here we have a drug that you clearly state with a documentation extends life, reduces tumors in many cases, is a real serious cancer treatment.
		And what we're saying, Doctor, as we track along the story of hydrazine sulfate is that, and I'm as much of a believer in, I'm as cynical about human nature as you can get, I suppose, but even I have a hard time believing that adult human beings understanding the gravity and the horrendous nature of cancer could,
		for the sake of money or current treatment paradigms or whatever, but basically money, hold back from the American public a treatment that saves lives.
		I mean, that's so horrible.
unidentified		It's very, very hard for me to reconcile to.
		I, like you, believe that also.
		But here are the real facts.
		Take a country like Russia now.
		After 17 years of clinical multi-centric testing of this drug in Russia via the joint U.S.-then-USSR cancer agreement of 1972, after 17 years of testing, the results were so good that the drug became a first-line cancer drug, has been so for five or six years there.
		And any physician in Russia can prescribe that by prescription, and it's available.
		And take a country like Canada.
		Now, as of at least December of last year, hydrocene sulfate became an approved drug in Canada by medical prescription.
		Now, this so infuriated the National Cancer Institute that, you know, the National Cancer Institute has a journal, it's called the JNCI, that the JNCI published in the spring an article chiding, actually, the Canadian government for allowing this.
		And the Canadian government just thumbed its nose at the NCI and is continuing this work.
		But we do have grown-up people, and it's money, and it's ego, and it's power, and it's unwillingness to say, well, gee, I made a mistake 10 years back, or 15 years back, or 5 years back.
		But they want to stay in power.
		They want to have the money.
		They want to have the say-so of what drugs get approved, what drugs get even published in the major journals.
		They're all the same people in our cancer leadership, and they all have the same word.
		The problem with hydrazine sulfate is that it's a bone in their throat.
		Look at all these published studies from everywhere on earth that are positive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But here's what I don't understand.
		If hydrazine sulfate is a positive aspect to conventional treatments, in other words, if it increases a person's chances greatly when they're taking chemotherapy or radiation,
		then I truly don't understand because you would imagine the doctors, the clinics could all continue to make their money from the traditional treatments, enhancing them with hydrazine sulfate.
		If it was one or the other, then I can understand the big money guys might put the squash on it.
unidentified		Well, some people in our cancer leadership feel that if hydrazine were approved, it would economically destabilize the cancer industry.
		Now, the cancer industry is cancer treatment, cancer research, cancer care, and cancer administration.
		Today, that's about a $200 billion a year business.
		And it is a business, Especially with new health care systems.
		A lot of people in our cancer research, cancer leadership are afraid that 30% of that figure would be immediately destabilized by hydrazine sulfate.
		I think they're wrong, to tell you the truth.
		I think that the use of hydrazine sulfate would open up new horizons, new scientific horizons, and there would be further treatments that would come along.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Doctor, we can't do it all tonight.
		We can't fight all of City Hall tonight.
		But what we can do is for those people out there who everybody's going to send me faxes and email.
		Uncle Joe has cancer.
		Please help, Art.
		Please help.
		Now, I want to be very careful here to tell my audience, we're going to give you a way to respond, but I want you to listen to me very carefully.
		Don't you call.
		Don't you call those of you who are listening right now.
		Don't call your buddy Joe, who has cancer, and tell him to call.
		What we want you to do is to have your medical professional, scientist, or doctor, get in touch with the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute.
		And then, Dr. Gold, I presume you have people who will talk to physicians and tell them exactly how to treat people.
unidentified		Yes, we would tell them how to go about getting the patient on hydrazine sulfate, if indeed they do want to get their patient on hydrazine sulfate.
		And you've said the right thing, Art.
		Please, please, please, audience, don't call the Institute yourselves.
		Get your health care professionals.
		If you call yourselves, all you'll do is jam up our telephones, and all our answerers will tell you is to have your physicians call.
		But there is also, can we give them our website?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, as a matter of fact, there is a link right now from my website to yours.
		So all they've got to do is go to my webpage, go down to your name, Dr. Gold, and they can jump right across to your website.
		Well, that would be fine.
		And everybody knows that.
		So what is the phone number for a physician or a scientist to call?
unidentified		Okay, here's the phone number, ARIA code 3154726616 or 6618.
		Now that 18 line is an emergency line for doctors, for cancer doctors only.
		So please respect it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So again, folks, not you, not the person suffering cancer, but their physician.
		And this is going to mean you're going to have to go into your doctor's office, and you're going to have to speak to your doctor and give him this number.
		And I'm about to repeat the number.
		It's area code 315-472-6616 or 6618.
		And again, it is for only doctors and scientists.
		And since we can't fight City Hall, maybe we can go around City Hall and help people anyway.
		And Dr. Gold, I can only imagine the reason that you've done all this is to help people.
unidentified		Well, the reason we're fighting now is to help as many people as we can.
		And we'll consider this a victory when the grassroots movement is so strong, and it's getting very, very strong now, that a major pharmaceutical company says to heck with this, to heck with the MCI, we're going ahead and sponsor this drug through the FDA anyway.
		Then we'll consider that a real victory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, doctor, I would presume that this number would also be one that you would welcome calls from major pharmaceutical companies.
unidentified		Oh, sure.
unidentified		Oh, sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Doctor, I thank you for being with us this morning.
		It's a brave fight, and it's a big industry you're up against there, my friend.
unidentified		Well, I think it's coming along very well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On behalf of all those suffering from cancer, I thank you.
unidentified		Okay, thanks a lot, Ar.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care, Doctor.
		All right, once again, I'm going to, as a public service, I want you to have this number.
		Please write it down.
		But it is only for your doctor or your scientist or any major pharmaceutical company who would like to do the right thing.
		Area code 315-472-6616 or Area Code 315-472-6618.
		And I have had somebody in my own family touched by cancer.
		I guess I ought to say more than touched.
		And most of us have.
		So I felt this hour was a very necessary hour to do.
		And I can only hope that it will help you.
		All right.
		Brace yourself.
		Beginning next hour, it's going to get rough.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Coast to Coast AM
		To talk with Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM from outside the U.S., first dial your access numbers to the USA.
		Then dial 1-800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Naive with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, good morning, everybody.
		Indeed, from the high deserts stretching in the west from the Tahitian and Hawaiian Island Shanes eastward to the Caribbean, northward to the North Pole, south all the way into South America and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM.
		And let me tell you, referring to my newest affiliate, a WABC in New York, I did an interview on their morning show, well, at the end of last week, I think, at the end of the final day of broadcast on WABC.
		And one of the morning personalities asked me what my view, my opinion of Flight 800 was.
		And I said, I think it was a missile that exploded adjacent to Flight 800.
		And I think it was a terrorist.
		And of course, that flies in the face of what we're being told by the FBI, the CIA, and I would imagine the NTSB as well.
		To bring you up to date and to remind you, on July 17th of 1996, TWA Flight 800 bound for Paris blew up off the coast of Long Island shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board.
		Witnesses described a huge fireball in the sky.
		July 18th, the FBI takes lead in the investigation.
		President Clinton warned the American public against jumping to any conclusions.
		Investigators study the bomb, missile, or mechanical malfunction theory as causes.
		July 25th, divers recover the plane so-called black boxes.
		Neither one yields any quick answers to the cause.
		August 30th, traces of RDX, a key ingredient in a plastic explosive used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 are found on wreckage.
		Investigators later suspect the material got onto the plane during a training of bomb-sniffing dogs.
		On September 16th of 1996, James Kellstrom, headed the probe for the FBI, calls rumors that the plane was felled by a U.S. missile outrageous.
		October 15th, a Boeing engineer says the center fuel tank, the focus of the probe, was designed to leave no chance that an electrical spark could cause an explosion there.
		November 2nd, Navy divers completed 15 weeks of terrible work, hard work, saying they had pulled up all the wreckage they could find.
		Fishing trawlers began scraping the ocean floor then for wreckage two days later.
		December 4th, TWA stages funeral for unidentified members of Flight 800.
		Now, 1997.
		February 8th, victims' families tour the wreckage at Long Island Hangar, placing roses on the seats where their loved ones sat.
		April 29th, trawling for wreckage halted after nearly six months.
		June 9th, investigators tell victims' families that the investigation is now in the final phase with no evidence found of a criminal or terrorist act.
		A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board blames that disaster on a center fuel tank explosion cause unknown but suspected mechanical source.
		November 12th, a victim's father tells the Associated Press he's received a letter from the FBI that says the agency has found absolutely no evidence of a crime and is now suspending its probe into the disaster.
		And that is the rough chronology of Flight 800.
		I should add, I suppose, one more point.
		About a week ago, the CIA released a graphic kind of cartoon image of what they thought occurred with Flight 800.
		It was aired by the American media generally for about one day and then more or less not seen again.
		Tonight, I have an aviation expert with us who is going to talk to us about Flight 800.
		He is William or Bill Donaldson and he has a significant history and is well qualified to speak on this subject.
		He has been an A4, long military record of course, an A4 attack pilot line division officer.
		He has been an advanced jet flight instructor line division officer.
		He has been an assistant air operations CCA officer.
		He has been a A4 US-2 pilot maintenance officer.
		He has been an A6 attack pilot safety officer.
		He has been an air operations officer.
		He has been a safety officer.
		He has been a nuclear plans officer, a chief of staff officer, a military expert who has made a presentation to the Presidential Base Closure Commission.
		In other words, he's got nothing but aviation history with him.
		We are going to talk to him about the details of what did occur on Flight 800.
		We also have two witnesses to what occurred on Long Island that terrible night.
		They would be Major Fred Myers, an attorney on Long Island who recently retired from the Air National Guard, who has extensive military pilot history, was active duty Navy helicopter pilot, holds the Distinguished Flying Cross or pilot rescues under fire in North Vietnam.
		That's North Vietnam.
		He is a witness to what occurred that night.
		We have Richard Goss with us.
		He owns a fine woodworking business on Long Island, had some private pilot experience, is an avid radio control airplane model flyer, has very sharp eyesight and very special spatial awareness, which you must have to fly a model.
		Richard is a non-drinker.
		He was sitting on the West Hampton Yacht Squadron's patio looking across Mariches Bay to the Barrier Island, and he saw what he thought was a large firework launched from inland or from the island, climbing straight up, traveling straight out to sea, leveling off, and then making a hard left turn just before it exploded.
		So, we have an aviation expert.
		We have two witnesses, and tonight you may hear the untold story of Flight 800.
		Let us first now go to William or Bill Donaldson.
		Welcome to the program.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Art.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Glad to be on with you this evening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Happy to have you.
		And we've got a lot to talk to you about, Mr. Donaldson.
		I skipped over your resume and did not include a very great deal of the detail of some of the jobs you've had.
		But basically, since about 1958, you've been in aviation one way or the other.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		In fact, I'm an Air Force Bratt.
		My father, I mean, I grew up with Air Force fighter pilots before I ever even joined the Navy.
		So probably 50 years of my life has been pretty totally immersed in tactical aviation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		We're going to have a lot of detail from you about the Flight 800 business, but I think we should lead the show with two people who actually saw what happened.
		And I've got them on the line, and I'm going to see if we can bring them up right now.
		They are Richard Goss and Major Fred Myers.
		Major Myers, are you there?
		Hello, Major Myers.
		Okay, I can barely hear you for some reason.
		Richard Goss, are you there?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I am.
unidentified		I'm here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we appear to have a problem.
unidentified		Maybe not.
unidentified		How is that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, much better.
		Much better.
		Is that Major Myers?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What happened?
unidentified		I just had two phones on the same line.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I see.
		No, you can't do that.
		All right, very good.
		What I think I would like to do, Mr. Donaldson, is to let you ask these gentlemen what they saw.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		That's probably, that'll work Pretty well.
		Fred Myers and I are sort of kindred spirits because we were in Vietnam at about the same time.
		Fred, why don't you go ahead and just go through what you were doing and what you saw, and we'll go from there.
unidentified		All right, interrupt me if I get too verbose.
unidentified		I was up on a routine evening training flight, actually just completing a series of mandatory monthly requirements, waiting for the sun to go down before we flew a night vision goggle air refueling mission, lights out air refueling.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What were you flying?
unidentified		I was flying an H-60 Black Hawk helicopter.
		And I was scanning the area in the front of and to the right of the aircraft because my co-pilot was flying an instrument approach, and he was heads down in the cockpit.
		In other words, his concentration, his eyes were on the gauges.
		He wasn't looking out for possible traffic that would collide with us.
		And we were near the end of the glide slope on this instrument approach when the tower called out, giving another aircraft clearance to land on my runway.
		So I immediately looked out in front of me to see where that traffic was.
		I couldn't see it, but as I was scanning the horizon, looking for this traffic, I saw a streak of light, which I've described many times, and I've described it as being similar in speed and trajectory of a shooting star, except that it was broad daylight, and the streak was red-orange in color.
		But it was moving from my left center to my further left.
		It was almost horizontal, but had a gently descending curve.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Major, you rescued people in North Vietnam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've seen missiles.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know what missiles look like?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that what this looked like?
unidentified		It could have been, but nothing at the moment in my head said, clicked and said this is missile for a couple of reasons.
unidentified		Certainly I wasn't looking for a missile.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Obviously, yes.
unidentified		And number two, the missiles I'd seen fired in Vietnam normally had erratic flight paths.
unidentified		They don't describe or did not describe a smooth arc in the air.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Now, Fred, to butt in a little bit, that's true.
		Most smaller anti-aircraft missiles are very erratic in flight, and it's something that every combat pilot would recognize.
		But we should realize that there are many missiles in various inventories that have rock-solid trajectories, and Fred may not have seen one of those in flight.
unidentified		Well, I had seen SAM-1s, and they were pretty old logs, telephone pole-type runs.
		But there was nothing about this that was unique and said to be this is a missile.
		So I can't make that determination that it absolutely was a missile, because it could have been a number of other things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Major, where were you specifically in the air in this Blackhawk when you saw this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where were you?
unidentified		All right, I was 200 feet in the air on the northeast end of a runway that faces southwest.
		So I was looking right straight down the runway and over the extended center line of the runway right at this streak of light.
		It was right in front of me.
		It was at a good distance, somewhere between 10 and 15 miles, and probably I had estimated at the time somewhere around 10,000 feet, although it's very difficult to estimate altitude at that distance.
		The streak of light lasted for three to five seconds.
		Then it stopped for somewhere around a second.
		And then immediately to my left, at the end of what would have been the trajectory of that same streak of light and at that speed, in other words, so that I made a conclusion that what I saw had come from the streak of light.
		Although the streak of light had stopped, then just about a second later, further to the left and on approximately the same line, I saw an explosion.
		High-velocity explosion.
		Looked for all the world to me like ordnance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ordnance.
		Like a warhead.
		In other words, this would not have been the main body explosion of the fuel tank of Flight 800.
		This would have been a sharp ordnance type explosion.
unidentified		That's exactly correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, you were in a Blackhawk, Major.
		I was just up in Alaska and was in a Blackhawk, and I'm aware of particularly the rescue types equipment.
		You have a lot of heat-sensing equipment on board as well as radar and so forth.
		Were you able to detect anything on instruments?
unidentified		No.
		We didn't have the forward-looking infrared radar, which is a heat-seeking depicting equipment.
		We did not have it energized at the time.
		It's normal to wait until after sunset to energize that equipment.
		Sure.
		And it has a cool-down period.
		We also have night vision goggles, which we have attached to our helmets, but we have them flipped up above the helmet so that they're not impeding our vision.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Understood.
unidentified		And they were off.
		So at this point, we're strictly what we call them, Mark I eyeball.
		We're flying on our normal vision in broad daylight on a beautiful evening with practically no clouds in the sky, just a very slight haze or scud layer that was more visible lower down than it was at 200 feet.
		At 200 feet, the visibility was excellent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Major, the CIA and the FBI have suggested that what people thought they saw and what they thought, you know, they're calling a missile, people like you, Major, who should know what you see, in fact, didn't see that at all.
		What they saw was fuel trailing from Flight 800 that appeared to be a streak of light.
		Can you address that?
unidentified		Well, that's pure fabrication.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		What's going on in the FBI, I don't know.
		But after the event, I talked to several people whom I've known for 15, 10 or 15 years, who are early middle-aged, 40s and 50s, good eyesight, highly reputable people, professional people, who told me that they had, by accident, seen something.
		And they had seen what they described, being civilians, they described it as a Roman candle or a rocket going up from the horizon.
		And there's no doubt in their mind that it was going up and not coming down.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And Art, this is Bill here, the critical point here in an investigation is that when Richard comes on here shortly, what he saw and what Fred Myers saw, when you draw the line on the Bering line, they cross about three miles offshore and they cross-correlate with other people up and down the beach.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		So the first sight of what appears to have been a missile, there are a whole lot of people that don't know each other at all, that point to the exactly the same place in the sky, and it was well inland of the track of the aircraft.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Major, were you interviewed by the FBI?
unidentified		I was.
unidentified		This happened on a Wednesday evening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And on a Friday afternoon, I sought them out at the East Maritz's Coast Guard station.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you actually went to them.
		Major, hold on.
		Everybody, hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the hour, and we'll pick up on that point when we come back.
		Tonight, Flight 800, as Paul would say, the rest of the story.
		This is coast-to-coast A.M. All right, we're talking about Flight 800.
		And we have with us right now Major Fred Myers.
		Major Myers was in a Black Hawk helicopter at about 200 feet when he saw a streak of light, and then what he describes as an ordnance explosion at an estimated 10,000 feet altitude.
		Now, again, an ordnance explosion means a weapon exploding, not a center fuel tank exploding.
		Everybody's back on the air again.
		Major, I asked you, did the FBI interview you, and you said you went to them.
unidentified		That's correct.
		I sought the FBI out on two occasions.
		They never came to me.
		And on the Friday after the accident, which would have been the 19th of July 96, I went to the FBI trailer at the East Merchant's Coast Guard station, knocked on the door, told them who I was, and asked them if they would like to take a statement from me.
		They seemed surprised, sort of caught off guard.
		They assigned two agents.
		I sat down in a room.
		One of the agents pulled out a little 2.5 by 4 inch spiral notebook out of his back pocket and a pen.
		And I spoke to them for approximately four minutes.
		They asked no questions.
		He took a couple of notes, and they said, thank you very much, and I left.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And Art, let me tell you something.
		He's not the only one that happened to.
		There's an inverted process here.
		If you didn't see anything, they wanted to talk to you.
		If you saw something very specific, they didn't seem to be too interested.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know.
		Well, we'll get into that later.
		Major Myers, you said you went to them twice.
		So you did not hear back from them.
		I take it at some point you said, what the hell's going on?
		Went back again?
unidentified		Well, actually, there was a meeting approximately two weeks later.
		My co-pilot was very dissatisfied with the fact that the FBI had not interviewed anybody in the crew and had not taken any of the actions that he thought were appropriate.
		Now, I'm not making any judgment on that, but he asked us to get together one more time, and we did.
		And during that meeting, I told, I think that was also on a Friday, maybe it was just one week later, I told the rest of the crew about a recurring dream I'd had which concerned one portion of our flight that night when we were approaching the fireball as it was already in the water.
		I had told Chris, who was at the controls, to slow the helicopter down to prevent us from flying under some debris that was still falling from the sky.
		And I had a picture in my mind's eye of that debris falling, and I saw that same picture over and over again, and it disturbed my sleep, kept me up for a week.
		Took about a week, and the dream worked its way out, and I could recognize what I was looking at in the dream.
		And I don't want to go into that, but at any rate, at that point, we called the FBI again, and I told them I had additional information that I thought would be helpful to them.
		And they sent two agents to the public affairs office's house.
		The unit TAO lived in Sena Mariches, right near the Coast Guard station.
		So they sent two agents up to talk to me.
		I talked to these two agents for about 15 or 20 minutes.
		They took notes, and they said, thank you very much, and left.
		That was the last interview I had one-on-one with anybody in the FBI.
		Sometime later, probably just about two weeks later, I gave a briefing to members of my own unit, the commanders of my own unit.
		There was an FBI agent present at that briefing.
		He asked no questions that I recall.
		Six months later, I had my first and only interview with the NTSB, and there was an FBI agent present at that meeting that lasted approximately 15 minutes, and he asked no questions then.
		and that's my total experience with the FBI Now, from the Kingdom of Nigh, more coast-to-coast a.m. with Art Bell.
		Here again is Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Major, since you were flying a National Guard helicopter, would you have been aware of any military exercises, live-fire military exercises, going on in the area?
unidentified		Not necessarily.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		The...
		Although it's a gray area.
		Now, we were scheduled to fly on an air refueling route.
		What this is, is a direct course and speed and altitude.
		They're all predetermined.
		They're filed with the local air route traffic control of the Federal Aviation.
		They know that we're going to be flying approximately two miles south of the beach on a course parallel to the beach at an altitude, a preset altitude.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, had there been something going on, if they had not viewed it as a possible conflict to your flight plan, you might not have been notified?
unidentified		Might not, because if it were happening in the, if it were a Navy exercise in Whiskey 106, 10 miles south of the beach, and we were only planning to be two miles south of the beach, they probably would not have notified me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Major, I think that we've got as much from you as we can have, except I just want to ask one more question.
		The most explosive, no pun intended part of your testimony is that you saw a high explosive ordinance detonation.
		How certain are you that's what it was?
unidentified		Look, I just look back on 25 years experience in the air, and I can say that, you know, just give it the duck test.
		My old buddy John Simnunu, if it looks like a duck, if it flies like a duck, it's probably a duck.
		And what I saw looked to me for all the world like an ordnance explosion.
		I don't know what else looks like that.
		And I might also comment that about a second and a half to two seconds after that ordnance explosion, there was a second high-velocity explosion of brilliant white light, like nothing I had recall having seen before or since.
		And then about two seconds or three seconds after that, there came the petrochemical explosion, which was the fuel burning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that would have been probably a bright orange.
unidentified		Bright orange, mottled color, a lot of black, a lot of mottled color, and grew to this huge fireball.
unidentified		But the point being, there were two high-velocity explosions before the fuel explosion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very clear.
		Major, I want to thank you.
		Bill, do you have anything else that we've missed that we should ask?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No, there's one point about that bright white light.
		Fred is not the only one that saw that, and that is a characteristic of high-velocity fragment penetration of aluminum.
		I'll give you a brilliant white flash, almost like a flash bulb.
		It's one of the collateral things that can happen with a warhead detonation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Warhead.
		All right.
		Major, I want to thank you for being with us this evening, and I wish you luck, my friend.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
		All right.
		That is Major Fred Myers.
		We'll now turn our attention to Richard Goss.
		Richard Goss, again, owns a business on Long Island.
		He is a witness to this event as well.
		Are you there, Richard?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Please lead us through what you know and what you saw.
unidentified		Yeah, that evening, you know, I belong to that West Hampton Yacht Squadron.
		And the West Hampton Yacht Squadron faces south, you know, the back porch on it.
		And that particular Wednesday evening, we have an informal sunfish race, and that's followed by a porch dinner.
		And that dinner, you bring your own food, and you have a little barbecue in the back, and then we gather there on the back porch, and it faces Marich's Bay and the Barrier Beach Dune Road.
		And we had just finished up our Wednesday race.
		I raced in that particular race, and we finished stowing our boats and putting our sails away.
		And I had just walked up onto the back porch and sat down at the table that some of my friends were at.
		And I was looking out over the bay, just relaxing from just this mild race.
		We were having a beautiful evening, very clear, light wind, light to moderate wind.
		And I just happened to look out over the bay and there was a little conversation.
		And then out of the corner of my eye came a, you know, I saw like a flare coming up, you know, toward the Barrier Beach area.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, is there any doubt at all about whether what you saw was going up or down?
unidentified		Oh, it was definitely going up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was definitely going up.
unidentified		It was definitely going up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it looked like a flare going up.
unidentified		It looked like a flare, and then it drew attention to a couple other people, and they said, you know, someone even mentioned, hey, look at the firework.
		And we all thought it was a firework, at least I did.
		Now I'm just pleasantly watching this bright red, pink, you know, flare.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Could you see, Richard, anything beyond the light itself?
		In other words, could you make out any substance to anything at all beyond the light?
unidentified		No, it was so bright, you know, and it was the typical look of a firework coming, you know, going up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We all know what they look like.
unidentified		And you know that light travels quite high up before it reaches its peak, and that's exactly what I saw.
		And then as it reached its peak, it sort of leveled out.
		And then the strangest part was it took a sharp veer left, and it was horizontal.
		You know, it moved horizontal at that point.
		And it was only a second or two later that I saw the massive, you know, explosion in the sky.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, again, Richard, the CIA and others have said that witnesses like yourself, who saw things like you're describing to us right now, were in fact seeing fuel trailing from the explosion of Flight 800, and that, in fact, it was not going up, it was going down, and it was an optical illusion.
		What do you say?
		What do you say?
unidentified		One hell of an optical illusion.
		I can't see that possible at all.
		I mean, it was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
		Let me try this out.
		You saw this thing rising, this light, which you thought was a flare, and it rose to a great altitude, and then you said took a turn.
		Now, a flare might go up and then in a trajectory might begin down again.
		That's not what you're talking about.
		You're talking about a horizontal turn that you saw.
		Is that correct?
unidentified		Definitely.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And Richard, you might give them a feeling of how fast this thing was moving.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I mean, moving up quickly or did it Appear to be going away from you.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, it was very fast and faster than a firework climbing.
		And then I could see that when it reached its peak, it was definitely traveling away.
		The flare was getting smaller.
		And then it took the sharp left, and you could see the smoke trail, sharp left.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then you could see a smoke trail.
unidentified		And then there was the explosion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		then an explosion um...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		did you see When you say you saw an explosion, what did you see precisely?
unidentified		I saw the large fireball at that point, and then about a second after that, there was a second explosion off to the side, off to the left side.
		As that fireball Started to come down the original fireball.
		There was a second explosion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bill, even if we were to buy into the explanation that it was trailing fuel that was on fire, is there any way you could imagine that the trailing fuel would have taken a sharp left-hand turn?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
		What Richard describes is the perfect layman's description of a missile engagement.
		You know, when I talked to him out there, we went out to the yacht club and I took bearing lines, precise bearing lines from his position.
		I even photographed that site later.
		And when I crossed it to these other people up and down 11 miles of beach, they all saw essentially the same thing.
		They saw something going vertically rapidly and then appear to level, go outbound.
		And Richard's probably the closest one of the witnesses I've talked to to the actual launch because it looks like, even though he thought it went from the barrier island as a fireworks, it probably was a missile about another three nautical miles offshore and a much bigger vehicle than a flare or a fireworks.
		And I've got lots of stuff we can talk to later on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course, yes, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Richard, did you go to the FBI?
unidentified		They came to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They came to you.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what was the nature of the interrogation or the investigation?
		What did they ask you?
		What did you perceive of their attitude?
unidentified		Their attitude when they there were two agents that interviewed me.
		Their attitude was very surprised at the viewpoint that I had, and they were very excited about what I had seen initially.
		And this was the first time I've heard Mr. Myers and it and he was describing the notepad, the small notepad, out of the back pocket.
		And that's exactly what they used, and all they used was the same was that same type of notepad and pen.
		And they r jotted down a few things.
		And the interview was four or five minutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Four or five minutes.
unidentified		And they one peeled off and he was speaking on a cellular phone in the background.
unidentified		And that was about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was that the only interview the FBI held with you or did they come back?
unidentified		They came back a second time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then?
unidentified		Very little excitement this time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was just sort of a follow-up and they looked at it was like something had changed?
unidentified		It was definitely like something had changed.
		And I was just I just couldn't believe it and that was it.
		It was no excitement, no anything after that.
		And then a third time they had called me on my cell phone in my truck and given me an over-the-phone interview.
		And that was it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you characterize their investigation as one that initially the agents were very interested in, and then in the both follow-ups you've described, they suddenly had comparatively a great disinterest in what you had to say?
unidentified		A disinterest and yeah, I would say that would be accurate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're not a drinker.
unidentified		No, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't take drugs.
unidentified		No, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're sure of what you saw?
unidentified		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you saw the CIA's description of what occurred and you heard the conclusion of mechanical failure on Flight 800, how did that hit you?
unidentified		You know, best described, looked down at the ground and shook my head.
		You know, I couldn't believe it.
		And the cartoon of that best describes it as a cartoon.
		It was a joke.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That isn't what happened.
unidentified		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Richard, I want to thank you for joining us this evening.
		We are going to proceed.
		your Absolutely.
		So I want to thank you, and we will continue with Bill Donaldson after the break.
		Richard, again, thank you for being here.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night.
		All right, that's Richard Goss.
		And when we come back, we will get into the technical details of what Bill Donaldson thinks occurred on Flight 800.
		So I suggest you stay with me if you want to hear the other side of the story of that tragedy.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Coast to Coast AM.
		Thank you.
		To talk with Art Bell from west of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, dial 1-800-618-8255.
		That's 1-800-618-8255.
		Now again, here's Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, good morning.
		We're dealing tonight with the Flight 800 disaster or criminal act.
		You determine that for yourself.
		In this last hour, we heard from Major Fred Myers, who personally witnessed what he describes as a high-explosive ordnance detonation.
		A streak of light, and then a high ordnance detonation.
		He viewed this from a Black Hawk helicopter about 200 feet in the air.
		So he is a witness to what occurred.
		Now, that doesn't sound like an overheated fuel tank exploding to me.
		It sounds like a witness, well-experienced, who has seen missiles, rescued pilots in North Vietnam, and saw all this from his Blackhawk.
		Then we heard from Richard Goss, a Long Island resident, well-trained, who also saw something rise from the ground without question to a high altitude, take a sharp left-hand turn.
		Then he too saw an explosion.
		Two eyewitnesses to what occurred with respect to Flight 800, not at all consistent With the CIA cartoon representation or graphic illustration of what they have concluded occurred with Flight 800.
		In a minute, William S. Bill, if you will, Donaldson, and I'll tell you, I'll give you an idea once again of who you're about to hear from so you understand the significance of what he's about to say.
		When 230 people died suddenly near Long Island, New York, Flight 800 bound for Paris.
		An accident?
		You decide for yourself as the evening progresses.
		All right, I want you to understand who you're about to hear.
		William S. Donaldson, Bill Donaldson, we'll call him.
		From 1963 2 through 5 was a Naval Aviation Cadet at the University of Maryland.
		65 through 7 was designated Naval Aviator and commissioned.
		1968 through 70 was an A-4 attack pilot and a line division officer who flew 89 combat missions in Southeast Asia, both North and South Vietnam, as well as Laos, where of course we never flew.
		Ran a line division of 40 men, 16 A-4C aircraft on the flight deck, and qualified as combat section and division flight leader.
		70 through 72 was advanced jet flight instructor slash line division officer, directed line division of 190 men, three officers, and 70 TA-4 and F-9 aircraft.
		He was then 72 through 74 Assistant Air Operations CCA Officer, though most junior of six officers then assigned to air operations, one of two fully qualified day-night in air ops hot seat, directed a division of 27 air controllers, best in the fleet.
		Division achieved perfect score and competitive exercise, resulting in the USS Forrestal winning the Battle E for operations.
		74 through 77 was an A4 US-2 pilot maintenance officer, directed the aircraft maintenance department there, named the best of 11 in the air wing.
		1978 through 80 was an A6 attack pilot and safety officer, qualified air wing alpha strike leader, managed the safety program for deployed A6 squadron, ran quality assurance program.
		1980, the year 1980, actually, an air operations officer planned and executed air operations for joint exercise operation solid shield 80, supervised a staff of eight officers and controlled the air war 350 combat air sorties from joint command post Key West.
		80 through 83 was a safety officer, managed aviation safety program for air wings three squadrons, 120 aircraft, 300 pilots, exercised oversight of all mishap investigations,
		kind of like what the NTSB does, discovered a cause of a series of out-of-control mishaps, 84 through 87 was a nuclear FLANS officer, formulated contingency war plans for use of nuclear weapons in NATO and represented the 6th Fleet to NATO headquarters in Belgium,
		exercised and certified each carrier battle group in conventional and nuclear operations.
		87 through 91 was a chief staff officer, supervised 90 member staff, oversaw $75 million budget, four subordinate commands, and five major contractors, was reporting custodian for 122 jet aircraft, responsible for all operational administrative, safety, personal, legal, and aircraft maintenance matters.
		A 91 through 92 was a military expert on a council which executed a 45-minute presentation to three members of the Presidential Commission on Base Closures, you'll recall that, cited by the chairman as the best he had seen.
		I think it's important that you understand who you are hearing.
		So that was a little lengthy, but I think because of the gravity of what we are discussing, what we've already heard and what we're about to hear, you needed to know who you're listening to.
		Bill, welcome back.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, thanks, Art.
		You know, this whole thing is kind of like eating an elephant.
		It's a pretty big program, but the only way you can do it is sort of one bite at a time.
		And I've got some things that when I tell your audience, you know, it's going to be tough for them to believe it.
		But I want to say up front, I'm doing this as a matter of honor.
		I don't want to make a nickel out of this, and I don't plan to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You haven't written a book?
		They're not doing a movie.
		Nothing like that.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		That's not the program.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Let me explain how I got what started this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, please.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I knew we were in trouble, we as a country, on this thing, when the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, a fellow by the name of Jim Hall, back in April, put an article in the Wall Street Journal that basically said that set the predicate for what they're doing now.
		He said the title of the article was, It Wasn't a Missile.
		And his justification was that the centerline tank had spontaneously exploded.
		Now, if your listeners don't pick up anything at all, but I say this is a key and it should open their eyes here.
		In the entire history of United States civil jet aviation, dating back over 30 years, every one Of these aircraft that the U.S. has ever built, these airliners, all are basically have the same fuel design that the 747 Flight 800 had.
		And they all use empty or near-empty center-wing tanks at one point or another, depending on what routes they fly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
		Maybe you can help me out right now.
		This was an aircraft headed from New York to Paris.
		That's a 3,000-mile, roughly, journey, I think, across the Atlantic.
		Would it be a normal thing on such a flight to have that center fuel tank empty or nearly empty?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		And the reason the answer is yes, is because in the northern hemisphere, when you're flying east to west, you're fighting a headwind.
		In other words, from Paris to New York, for instance, you might have a 100-knot headwind at above 30,000 feet.
		So when they're coming from Paris to New York, for instance, they need every bit of fuel they've got.
		But when they turn around and go the other way, from New York back to Paris, you've got this tremendous tailwind that's operating the whole time you're in flight.
		So in effect, if you filled that center tank up when you left Kennedy, you'd be hauling 80,000 pounds or more of dead weight.
		And that's really not safe.
		You don't want to land with that extra weight, especially when it's fuel in an airplane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate that answer because I've heard many talk hosts say it was insane to imagine the center fuel tank would have been empty on that long a journey, but that certainly explains it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would there have been some fuel in that tank?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		There was approximately, they're saying now 50 to 100 gallons.
		You're talking about an immense tank.
		Its measurements are 20 feet by 20 feet by 6 feet tall, roughly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And you'd have about a half an inch, 50 gallons of, well, 100 gallons would be about a half inch, a little over a half inch of fuel in the bottom.
		Now, here's what I wanted to finish saying here, that in the whole history of airliners built in the United States, their entire history of flight, there has never been in history a spontaneous fuel tank explosion in any tank, not just the center wing tank.
		That adds up conservatively to 150,000 years plus of flight time.
		And now, here we had, back in April, we had the chairman of the NTSB saying up front, well, we solved the problem.
		We just had a spontaneous explosion in a tank.
		Okay, to me, that got my attention.
		That's what got me involved in this.
		I knew it was probably absolute BS.
		So I went ahead and I ordered the fuels manual, and I studied it, and I found out right off the get-go what I really already knew from my military experience.
		The fuel that was in the airplane is called Jet A1, and it's universally used around the world now.
		It was created by American Fuels Technology.
		That fuel is extremely safe.
		And I want to tell you something.
		I mean, I've done this.
		I've even made a videotape and took it up to Congress and showed it to him.
		You can take the biggest, I actually used two big matches, long matches like you'd use to light a fire in a fireplace.
		And you can light the matches and you can just slowly immerse the lit match into the surface of that fuel and it'll go out.
		And it'll go out all the way, and you can heat the fuel all the way up to 127 degrees.
		Actually, 126 degrees, it'll still go out.
		At 127 degrees, you'll get a slow fire.
		It will propagate across the surface of the fuel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A slow fire.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		In other words, and this is really what the Aviation Fuels Manual tells you when you get into the technical side.
		And I don't want to go too far afield there, but the bottom line is this.
		What I discovered is that at the temperatures, the normal operating temperatures of that fuel in that aircraft, and remember at the altitude that it was at, the temperature was 21 degrees Fahrenheit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Understood.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Okay, now, you couldn't even, you could hold a barbecue in the fuel tank and dump your hot coals into that fuel and they'd go out.
		So here we have the lead safety agency in the United States, the political head of that agency, telling the whole world that we have dangerous fumes in fuel tanks, and it's absolute nonsense.
		And Congress has put them on, you know, has put the pressure on.
		They've farmed out all kinds of testing to Caltech and some other people.
		And they wouldn't answer the question, what was the temperature in the centerline tank?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If the conclusion was the center tank spontaneously blew up, then why has there not been great directives from the NTSB regarding changes in the center fuel tank configuration?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, initially, and that I've got several letters, I think you've got them, that we sent back and forth between Mr. Hall and myself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		That was my very point, that if you have the NTSB, if they really thought that there was a severe hazard to flight safety, then they have a fiduciary duty to the flying public to immediately put in a safety fix, if you will.
		Now, I knew from my experience as maintenance officer and safety officer that every aircraft for engineering and just regular maintenance purposes, all of these tanks have low-point drains.
		And I knew that you could get a fuel sample out of that tank in almost no time.
		So after we sent the questions to Mr. Hall, they absolutely wouldn't answer the temperature question.
		I went up to New York.
		Mr. Hall is the head of the National Transportation Safety Board.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you went to New York?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Went to New York, got an airline.
		I can't name which one because it'll get them in trouble with the NTSB.
		But I had one of their 747s that was turning around, going back to Europe, exactly like Flight 800 was.
		I went ahead and had them pull a sample out of that tank.
		It took all of two minutes.
		All you do is pop a little access door on the bottom of the wing.
		You stick about a four-foot hollow tube up there and press on a spring-loaded valve on the bottom of the tank.
		The fuel goes into the tube, into the container at the bottom of the tube.
		Then I had them poured into a thermos that I had rigged to take the temperature out of.
		I took the temperature, and the fuel was exactly one degree warmer than the ambient air.
		It was 69 degrees, and it was 68 on the ambient air at the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, now I've heard claims that the air conditioning units on Flight 800 or all 747s are located below this fuel tank and that these 747 Flight 800 had been sitting on the ground and the theory was that the center fuel tank had been heated by these compressors, I guess, running and to a temperature that finally caused an explosion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there any way that could have happened?
unidentified		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		The reason is that when that aircraft was certified 30-some years ago, they go into unbelievable depth into testing, okay, number one.
		And when they do that, they create documents that go to maintenance people and they create documents that go to pilots.
		And the document that goes to pilots specifically says, due to the testing that was done 30-some years ago, that extended, meaning long periods of time, of air conditioning unit operation on the ground may raise the temperature 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the center wing tank.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the ambient.
unidentified		Right.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Now, what I found out when I did that little simple two-minute test, it cost me about $15 for a thermos and a thermometer.
		Sure.
		The NTFD has spent millions on instrumenting airplanes and flying them around, and they still won't answer the question.
		What's the temperature in the tank?
		And they're sticking to this thing like glue to something, and they won't give it up.
		But they're in trouble because I just can't imagine that there's any way to fabricate an answer here.
		But here's the bottom line.
		What the fuels manual tells you is there's something there that tells you that gives you the answer to what happened to Flight 800.
		And that is this.
		The tank did explode.
		There's no question that the center line tank exploded.
		There was an overpressure event that was a fuel air event in the tank.
		Now, you know, I've just spent 10 minutes saying that can't happen.
		Well, there is a way that it can happen.
		Anytime the tank is subjected to a severe amount of energy, for instance, if the aircraft is involved in a mid-air collision with another airplane or it crashes on the ground or even hits the water, what happens to the fuel in the tank is it's slammed against the walls, especially an empty tank like that, and the fuel is misted into the atmosphere.
		Misted fuel can explode.
		All you need is the spark.
		And it can explode even the safe fuel at very low temperatures compared to a stable tank.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But again, let us be clear.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Under normal flight conditions, even ascending, an airplane underpower ascending, going through 10 to 13,000 feet, there would be no way under those conditions that you would get fuel misting in that center tank.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No.
		There's no, unless the what the graphs show you in the fuels manual is basically they show you what you could do.
		For instance, if instead of a 747, we're talking about an F-15, for instance, and it does a lot of aggressive acrobatics, then there is an agitated tank figure that drops the temperature about 50 degrees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But that would not be the case with a 747.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No, I've simply climbed.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I've never been on a 747 when they pulled any loops or rolls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		All right, Bill.
		Hold tight.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
		Take a break, and we'll be right back.
		Listen carefully, folks.
		Listen very carefully tonight as you decide what really happened to Flight 800.
		I'm Art Bell, and from the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AM.
		Well, I think it's time to get ready To realize just what I have found I have to stand on a hand Once again, William Donaldson, Bill Donaldson.
		Mr. Donaldson, in your considerable expert opinion, what did bring down Flight 800?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, jumping to the bottom line, I think that the highest probability by far is a missile engagement with external warhead detonation well outside the hull of a relatively large missile.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, a proximity detonation.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And most people don't have a lot of technical knowledge about this stuff, but it's modern anti-aircraft weapons missiles are designed and are actually far more deadly if they use a proximity fuse and do detonate away from the hull of the aircraft.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, the NTSB and everybody else kept looking for a giant hole in the plane where a missile would have penetrated.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, not only that, but they were looking for when you have a detonation and the fireball actually touches the metal, you get deep metal pitting from the extremely high-velocity gas from the detonation and scouring, they call it, where the metal actually looks like it's like an orange peel or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, they did not find that?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No.
		See, what they're doing is they're saying, well, we didn't find that, so therefore a missile or a bomb didn't happen here.
		And there is a gross, gross fallacy with that.
		I don't know what a good metaphor would be, but for instance, some of the larger missiles that are in various inventories are designed to go off as far as 40 to 60 feet away or more away from the hull.
		And if that happens, what you'll get is penetration of the hull with extremely high velocity metal fragments.
		And depending on the orientation of the missile when it's approaching the aircraft, and I think, by the way, after going through, Richard Goss gave me a good lead and I went two investigators that are inside this thing, I can't tell you who they are because they'd be in deep trouble.
		But there is a through-hole that goes, enters at L2 door, just a little aft of L2 door, on the left side, the second door back on the left.
		The six-inch hole, the piece of fragment went through and exited above the R2 door.
		And actually, if you look at photographs, you can see that there's a high-velocity penetration coming from the inside going through the structural member right above that door.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God, now wait a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're telling me, if I'm listening carefully and hearing this, that there was a large hole in a door, both entry hole and exit hole.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right, that actually didn't go through the door, but it was in close proximity.
		In other words, we had an entry on the left side of the aircraft, just adjacent to and right next to a window, actually, of the L2 door on the left side.
		This large piece, it had to be at least six inches in diameter, went through the cabin and exited going through just above the R2 door.
		Now that's critical because in the breakup sequence of the aircraft, one of the first major structures that came off the aircraft was the R2 door.
		And actually, it's the big piece that contains the door.
		When that happened, it was the beginning of the nose coming off the aircraft, which happened very, very quickly.
unidentified		The Air Force
unidentified		From the Kingdom of Nineveh, across the country, around the world, and throughout the universe, this is Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell on the CBC Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Donaldson, how could such a glaring piece of evidence, forensic evidence, not be reported?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How could we not know about that until just now?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Listen, I'm not the guy that discovered it.
		The investigators told me, okay?
		I mean, I can see, I've got color photographs that show the exit hole, and it's clear as a bell to me, because that fragment hit one of the longitudinal stringers in the fuselage above that door with such force that it forced the stringer through the skin of the aircraft from the inside.
		It cuts, if you look at the photograph, you'll see what looks like a hatchet cut almost going from the inside out through the, just above that door.
		Now, I'm going to tell you some stuff that's a lot, that's even worse than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But before you do, again, I've got to ask you, these investigators that you spoke to, who told you this, who supplied you with the photograph or whatever, why, sir, did this not get into the news?
		Why did this not become an integral part of the investigation?
		Why was it not reported?
		Or if it was, why was it ignored?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I assume it's the same reason that there's probably 20 or 30 other similar proofs, if you will, of the, to use their vernacular, a criminal act.
		It's probably more like an act of war if it was terrorists or proxies for some other outfit.
		But the point is that in every one of these incidents that I see clearly with my experience that it's proof of an engagement of a weapon, they find some way to deny it or talk around it.
		And one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen on television was Mr. Calstrom the other morning in one of the morning shows.
		He's telling this young lady that he was taking on tour around the hangar there with the wreckage in it.
		He said, well, we've done these missile tests and we've proven it's not a missile.
		And he showed her what I'll call hit plates.
		When you do a test firing of a warhead at various ranges, you use aluminum sheets and so on and see what the damage is.
		Well, what he showed, I mean, I could have done that much damage with my 12-gauge shotgun from 15 yards away.
		And what they tested, obviously, were very small, like shoulder-fired weapons at a distance from the hip plates.
		And, you know, you've got relatively small holes less than the size of your fist.
		What I'm talking about, and what I know happened to that airplane, that airplane was in a train wreck at 13,700 feet.
		There's no other way to explain it.
		The last two days I've been meticulously grafting the debris field on graft paper.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I have the internal documents that were generated by the NTSB that shows precisely where every piece of metal went into the water.
		And I'm going to tell you that what they showed you in that CIA cartoon is a total fabrication.
		And when you study a debris field and do the ballistic geometry on that debris field, and I'm looking at something that's only 7,000 feet long, I'm looking at It's not broken into three distinct debris fields like they've been telling the public.
		They're saying that, you know, there's debris from the first explosion and then the nose came off in one big piece and landed in a hole and then further on the rest of the airplane crash.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I saw the cartoon.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		That didn't happen.
		Okay.
		There are two distinct debris fields, not three.
		And this is critical because that whole cartoon, the only way that they can get professionals to even swallow this wine is if there was some kind of an explosion in the center wing tank would not be really very powerful.
		And it's hard for people to believe in the business that it would take the nose off a 747 to begin with.
		But what I'm going to tell you next indicates that whatever that was was far, far more powerful than anything that a center wing tank could do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Go right ahead.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		When you look at the debris field, what you do is you determine where the course of the aircraft, it was flying on a heading of 071 true at 13,700 feet when this event occurred.
		When the event happened, and what I'm going to say happened was a missile approaching from the left low front of the aircraft did a hard left turn.
		It was approaching almost perpendicular, slightly below the left wing, turned hard left and detonated in front of and below the left wingtip.
		The reason I say that is that there's debris in the first part of that debris field that should never be there if it was only a center wing tank explosion.
		That debris is wingtip antenna debris off the left.
		There's an HF antenna on each wing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Wingtip.
		And there's a piece of that.
		It's in the very first beginning of the debris field.
		And then a little further on, you have the upper and lower outboard skin from the left wing.
		You know, how did that happen?
		And then, of course, the rest of the wing and the main part of the airplane goes another 6,000 feet before it goes into the water.
		So that's one indicator.
		Here's another indicator.
		When the event occurred, the aircraft didn't break up at the center wing tank first.
		The first big pieces that hit the water, there was one piece of the spar that came out of the center wing tank.
		I think that was a result of the secondary fuel explosion caused by the weapon going off.
		But the left forward cargo compartment, 16 feet in front of the center wing tank, a big piece of that came off first.
		And then a little further aft in that left compartment, lower left compartment, actually was blown from the left side of the aircraft over 2,000 feet to the right of the aircraft track, way, way out there.
		Now, and that's why I described this more like a train wreck at altitude than it was a center wingtank explosion.
		You can't get a piece of the left side of the fuselage of the airplane displaced 2,000 feet to the right of track with a center wingtank explosion that's in the center of the airplane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you raised this issue with the NTSB or?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No.
		You're hearing it for the first time, and this is a product of a detailed study in the last two days that I've been doing on this graph material.
		I was shocked when I saw this, because what it means is that within the first month, when they started putting this stuff together, that debris field is a perfect fingerprint for a massive explosion in the sky.
		It was not a center wing tank explosion only.
		That was a collateral result.
		Now, here's the other thing.
		I mean, slow me down if I get too pumped up on this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Go right ahead.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		But the nose section that you see sort of tumbling off, falling down, looking like it's intact, that's a total fabrication.
		That nose section was blown to kingdom come.
		It came down, not in one big piece, but it came down in groups of five.
		There were five sections of multiple pieces that hit the water.
		One of those pieces, groups of pieces, like six or eight pieces of fuselage, landed way, way off to the right, like 2,000, again, 2,000 feet to the right of the track of the aircraft.
		Now, you know, they're telling you that this nose just kind of tumbled off and it sort of broke off and fell on the water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, for those who didn't see it, what I saw of this CIA cartoon or graphic representation of what occurred was the plane was going along.
		It showed a large explosion.
		The front portion of the aircraft fell forward intact, while the airplane itself actually rose in altitude in this cartoon, and then of course came down in the fireball.
		That could not have happened?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No.
		Well, let me address on the nose thing.
		What they're telling you, the reason they're saying that I think that it was intact and it just kind of fell on a hole there, is there's no way you can, with the application of physics and science, explain how that whole big giant piece of nose was shattered into five major subcomponents and that some of them were blown so far off the course of the aircraft.
		It takes a tremendous amount of energy to do that.
		That's why I keep going back to it's like a train wreck.
		It's like a freight train hit this thing from the left side.
		That's what the debris field is saying.
		Now the cartoon, the most absurd thing that I've ever seen in my life dealing with aviation was what the CIA put together there.
		That aircraft with the nose, with all that gross tonnage of the nose coming off, will pitch up all right.
		It'll pitch up instantly to a 90-degree pitch up, and the airplane will immediately, the flat bottom of the wing will hit the wind, and the rest of the airplane starts to break up and it's over.
		It's not Going to climb 200 feet, much less 3,000 feet.
		Remember, when the nose comes off, the throttle controls go with it.
		All the hydraulic lines are severed, the electrical lines are severed.
		Everything that the pilot has going back to the engines is cut.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Donaldson, Pierre Salinger, as you well know, stuck his neck way out and claimed he had evidence of a friendly fire missile accident.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All of a sudden, Pierre Salinger just sort of went away.
		People said he was duped, and he just sort of went away, and you don't hear any more about it.
		Did Pierre Salinger have it wrong?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		The short answer is yes, because what he did was he jumped to the conclusion that if it was a missile that shot it down, it had to have been a friendly fire incident.
		And the problem with that, and the problem with the book that was published along the same lines stating the same thing, is that once the main media jumped on that and started trying to fact-check it, and there are no facts that support any military activity of any significance that you could put your finger on.
		Now, there were some submarines that were operating within that area, but basically our submarines don't have those kind of weapons on board.
		And I mean, I know from my own experience, I mean, I never seriously considered this once I talked to the chief of staff down at Air Land in Norfolk.
		I mean, I know the guy socially, and he said, hey, we had a cruiser about 130 miles out.
		They were coming home, and they were out of range.
		We just didn't have any assets in the area.
		There was a P-3 airborne in the area that shows up on the radar tapes and so on.
		But what I'm trying to say is, I mean, remember, I'm a naval officer.
		I mean, I'm in retirement as a regular officer.
		I could be recalled tomorrow if the commander-in-chief said he wanted to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And after this show, you may be.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I know, I've been thinking about it.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		But the point that I'm making is the fact that it wasn't the Navy that did it doesn't mean that there wasn't a missile fired.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Physical facts tell me almost without a shadow of a doubt that, and I'm not even talking about all these eyewitnesses that I've interviewed here yet, but without a shadow of a doubt, there was a major event that was caused by a missile on that aircraft, and there may have been two.
		There are eyewitnesses that saw two launches, and I think that one was launched vertically.
		Goss saw that one, and so did Major Myers.
		But when you go further to the east, I had an eyewitness that wanted to get on with you, but he's working early in the morning, couldn't do it.
		But he was out at Quag, Docker's restaurant, way, way up the beach, and he saw a missile going out at about a 45-degree angle, which we haven't talked about it yet.
		But the other pilot with Myers in that Hilo thought he saw a missile coming from the left.
		Myers saw one coming from the right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would have been his co-pilot?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		I haven't talked to him.
		He works, I guess, for one of the government agencies, and they basically told him to stay out of this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Donaldson, you believe it was a terrorist missile or missiles that took this plane down?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Through logic, yes.
		I mean, I can't imagine that there really is anything else that could have been.
		And there's a reason for this.
		It fits, in a way, it fits a fingerprint there because of the tactics that were used.
		What I'm getting as a firing position is about four nautical miles straight out from where Richard Goss was sitting there at the West Hampton Yacht Club.
		That puts it about three nautical miles offshore.
		And the reason I could find that is, unlike their testimony of the way the FBI did the investigation, I went up there with GPS satellite equipment and ran these people down, went out to the site that they were at, took bearing line information to where they first saw a flare or missile on the surface, took that bearing and put it on charts.
		I've got Suffolk County Police reports from all up and down the coast, and almost to a T, all these people saw something very close to the beach being launched.
		In fact, I've got witnesses that are 60 years old that thought that the stuff came right off the beach itself.
		And they were on the backside of the barrier beach, and they go running, huffing, and puffing over the sand dune to look down and see where the heck this damn thing came from.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At what altitude was that plane when the described high-detonation explosion occurred?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm saying it was at 13,700 feet.
		I've watched a radar tape, and that's when the transponder went dead.
		It was indicating exactly 380 knots.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		13,500.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		13,500.
unidentified		13?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, 13,000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What kind of missile could do that?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		In my last letter to Mr. Hall, I pointed out a scenario where I picked one, and that's really all it is.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I don't have physical evidence of the missile other than...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What did you pick?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I picked the Iranian AIM-54A Phoenix.
		That missile weighs 985 pounds.
		It's got its own onboard terminal radar guidance system.
		In other words, once the missile's fired, it's totally all by itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Capable of reaching what altitude was.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		That missile could reach 100,000 feet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		100,000 feet.
		All right, Mr. Donaldson, stand by.
		We're at the top of the hour when we come back.
		Shortly, we're going to try to get the phone lines open.
		I'm Art Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		The End
unidentified		From the Kingdom of God, across the country, around the world, and throughout the universe, this is Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell on the CBC Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Back now to Bill Donaldson.
		Bill, welcome back.
		Here's a facts, Bill.
		Your guest, Mr. Donaldson, has not mentioned the numerous military aircraft that have exploded due to defects in their fuel tanks.
		In other words, KC-135s, B-52s.
		Some have exploded due to faulty fuel pumps.
		Is your guest positive that the air conditioning compressor on the 747 was not in any way defective?
		Defective air conditioners can run very hot.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let me, there's two answers to that question.
		There are, there's on record, there are three KC-135 explosions that were dating back 15 years or more.
		But you have to realize that the KC-135 is a Boeing 707 that is all-fuel tank.
		It is loaded from nose to tail with high-pressure pumps, and its mission is to transfer fuel to V-52s and other big aircraft in the Air Force.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Refueling, yes.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right, air-to-air refueling.
		Now, the key to that is, and where it became very misleading when Mr. Hall presented that to Congress as an answer, that yes, there has been explosions.
		The difference is that all of those explosions, it took me five minutes to find this out when I called the Air Force Safety Center.
		Every one of those airplanes that blew up were fueled with JP-4.
		JP-4 was the old fuel that is just as volatile as the gasoline, regular gasoline you put in your car.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not like the JP-1.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No, the difference is like dynamite and fuel oil.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there's a tremendous difference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, end of that story.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Second point was, are you sure the air compressor or the air conditioning compressor was not faulty and particularly hot?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess the straight answer to that is no.
		I don't think anybody could say that.
		Some of those packs were just about intact when they found them.
		And I have a very strong suspicion that if the NTSB could even pin, could find anything that would support that idea, that it would be made known immediately.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You bet.
		The following from a pilot, the CIA tape shows the 747's nose breaking loose, yet the fuselage falls nose downward.
		As a pilot for 35 years, it seems more likely it would have been instantly tail-heavy due to a major shift in the aircraft.
		Center of gravity.
		It's what he says here.
unidentified		Another CIA, FBI lie.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you concur?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I just did.
		Let me tell you something here.
		For those that don't know a lot about aerodynamics, there is a basic concept of an aircraft in flight, a regular conventionally designed airplane like the 747.
		When it's in flight, it's being held up by the lift that's generated on the wing, obviously.
		That's called the center of lift.
		And if you think of the airplane as a seesaw balancing across the center of lift, which is the wing, the tailplane is always pushing down to the aircraft is designed to be always a little bit nose heavy across the center of lift to give positive stability.
		Now, what the pilot's referring to, and he's 100% correct here, when you suddenly lose all of that gross tonnage in the front of the wing, virtually everything forward of the wing, that wing is lifting over 750,000 pounds right after takeoff like that.
		So now you've cut the seesaw in half, and the fulcrum of the seesaw is pushing up with three-quarters of a million pounds of push-up.
		The tail is pushing down, trying to balance what used to be the nose that's no longer there.
		So you instantly get a snap on the airframe where it pitches right into the wind.
		And I can tell you from talking to the medical examiner, I don't want to get too graphic here, but almost everybody died instantly in the airplane from the violent, I guess the best way to call it is whiplash when that happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I would like to take some calls, if we might.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Am I on Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Where are you?
		My name is Denny.
		I'm from the Philadelphia area.
		Okay.
		I drive a truck all night, Art.
		I think I have an interesting piece of information here.
		When this crash happened, the local radio station down here was receiving a lot of call-ins from people out of the New York area.
		And one in particular that stuck in my mind was a gentleman had just come in.
		He was very excited.
		They were out on a party boat fishing.
		And he claimed that while they were out there fishing, that there was this particular trawler that had been zigzagging in and out of the party boats.
		And what was noticeable about it was it had no flag, no markings, or lights on it.
		And it headed off into the distance after a little while.
		And they packed up and they were heading in.
		And he said that he saw a missile coming up from the general direction of where this boat was.
		And that's all I have to say.
		It always stuck in my mind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bill, are you familiar with that report at all?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No.
		And the problem is that the only people that really have access to all of that are the police agencies up there and the FBI.
		And, you know, if it's like some of these other witnesses that I have interviewed, it seems like they sit on that stuff.
		I did interview Roland Penny, who was at sea when this thing happened.
		And he went right out to the crash site.
		And what he told me was he almost got run over by a tug pulling a barge with its lights off.
		So there was a lot of suspicious boat activity in the immediate area.
		And you have to understand, that's a major shipping lane.
		Just like it's an air corridor to Europe, it's a shipping corridor all up and down the East Coast and also offshore.
		So the amount of surface traffic is just horrendous.
		And I appreciate that input there from, was it Denny?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a good tip.
		And I wish I could track all these individuals down and get them on audio tape and put it all together.
		But it's kind of tough with one guy doing this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		My name is Dave.
		I'm calling from Los Angeles.
		All right.
		With all the talk about it possibly having been a missile that took down a plane, who was on the plane?
		Could there have been someone on there that wasn't there?
		We had a congressman on there or something, right?
		Wasn't there someone from the government that was on the plane?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I think there were reports of that at first, but I don't think it panned out.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		The FBI, I know, did detailed, at least they claim that they've done detailed interviews with every passenger, family members of passengers, and none of that has surfaced, that there was a...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I realize that this is going to call for conjecture, but we are imagining tonight that the FBI, the CIA, the NTSB, and all of this investigation has been, in effect, muzzled.
		Covered up.
		It's a lie.
		That's what you said a little while ago.
		To what end, Mr. Donaldson?
		To what end?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's the if you put the event in the time sequence in history and when it happened, I can put a little conjecture on the table here.
		If you remember, first of all, look back at this administration's history dealing with terrorism.
		We have the event in Saudi Arabia.
		There was a bombing where four or five service members died, and then the Khobar Towers where it was 19 or 20 or whatever it was.
		We did not respond.
		All we did was retreat from the Khobar Tower things.
		I'm talking about we as a country as a military response.
		We moved those guys into the desert.
		So then you've got the Democratic Convention going down.
		All of a sudden, bang, Flight 800 goes in.
		There's hundreds, literally, of witnesses telling the police that they saw ascending flares.
		You've heard it all.
		Sure.
		Immediately, now here's what I think as a military officer should have happened.
		What should have happened is that the Department of Defense should have been put on alert and should have been the lead until they could determine that there was not a missile involved.
		But instead, the White House put one of the closest friends of Al Gore, probably that he's got, Jim Hall in the NTSB, the political leadership of the NTSB, in charge in almost apparent competition with the FBI.
		And that's where it went down.
		I honestly think that there was a directive probably from the White House that told them, no matter what you find, cool it until after the election, or at least until the election's in the bag.
		And I know that's a dreadful thing for somebody to say, but everything appears that way.
		And I say that because there's evidence of it.
		One of the strangest things I've ever seen was the President of the United States signed a directive from the White House about the time Pierre Salinger went public with his allegation that withdrew Whistleblower Protection Act status for all the Navy personnel involved in the recovery process.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why the hell would he do that?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And they even put it on the internet, on the White House page until somebody said, hey, what's that?
		And they jerked it.
		I mean, I got a copy of it from, well, I'll just save some lawyers.
		But the key here is it was a ridiculous thing to do unless you don't understand the way the military works.
		I mean, on active duty, you're under the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
		And as long as the order that you're being given is a legal order, I mean, they can order those sailors not to talk to anybody.
		But as soon as one of them figured out it was a cover-up, under the UCMJ, you could actually violate the order and say, hey, this is wrong.
		It's morally wrong, and it's an illegal order, and I'm going to talk about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Here's something else somebody would ask, and so I will ask.
		If it had been a terrorist act.
		Terrorism is not much good unless you know that it's terrorism.
		Right.
		Now, most acts are followed by some claim of responsibility, usually accompanied with proof, right?
		Some sort of proof.
		Here we have, that I'm aware of, nothing of the sort.
		So what good the terrorism unless you have terrified people, unless they have the knowledge that an act of terrorism has occurred?
		Why nobody taking claim?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let me, there's a relatively, I think, a good answer to that.
		Number one, I'm not sure that there weren't claims.
		In fact, there was a hubbub of activity right after the event, within a day or two, that there had been a prediction made by one of these groups of fundamentalists in, they'd sent a communique to a newspaper, I think, in Egypt.
		And the White House immediately denied it had anything to do with Flight 800, which I thought was a little strange at the time.
		But let's say that they didn't take public credit.
		What you really got here is intimidation of the United States government.
		Governments very often do not tell the public what's going on in back-channel communications.
		In other words, all the stuff that happens between us and Israel and the Palestinian situation, about 99% of it is State Department.
		It's basically sealed from public view, the communications.
		There's no way for you and I to know that whoever did this did not make it explicitly clear to the government of the United States why it Was done.
		And here's the terrifying thing to me, and one of the reasons I'm in this.
		The NTSB has created a scenario here where they've already warned the country, in fact the world, that there's a possibility that these center wing tanks can explode unexpectedly.
		Let's say we have a group that says, okay, if you don't cave in to Arafat or whatever demand is made, the demand du jour from that part of the world, we'll do it again.
		And, you know, that's the biggest nightmare I can think of for a President of the United States.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course.
		And would it be made public?
		The answer is clearly no.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Clearly no.
		I took exactly one week after Flight 800 went down, I flew out of Kennedy on a TWA-747 to Europe, and it was, believe me, white-knuckle all the way until we were way up at cruising altitude.
		And at that point, there was tremendously increased security on the ground.
		I mean, they went through every little minutiae, they looked at everything.
		And that has all sort of now gone away.
		Yes, there's a little increased security, but basically, we're almost back to where we were before all this occurred.
		So what has been the sum total of our action with regard to this aircraft going down?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't see any end.
		I see $70 million that they were real proud of.
		I don't know they were proud of it, but they were asked a question in that joint press conference when they announced the FBI was dropping out.
		But $70 million, and what's the end result?
		I mean, all I see is really a PR operation directed at the American people by the authorities, political authorities, and various departments in the government.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By our own government.
unidentified		Right.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And my personal belief is I've dealt, I mean, I've personally been involved in some of these things in the Mediterranean dealing with these folks with military operations.
		And the one thing that I really believe in my heart, and that is that a strong forward presence and an immediate accountability, for instance, harken back to the Reagan situation with Gaddafi.
		President Reagan delivered one of the biggest air raids in history in a short one-day period on Libya based on the death of one American soldier in a cafe in Germany.
		He had communicated, well, he actually had intelligence that Libya was involved in a cafe bombing where one of our soldiers died.
		And he unleashed, I know because I was in 6th Fleet at the time, we had two carriers on full alpha strikes into what used to be Wheelis Air Force Base.
		We left that place in a total rubble.
		You know, a lot of the effectiveness of what we did on that one raid was never reported because the access for the media in there was very limited.
		But It was believe me, from the point of view of a terrorist or a rogue state, when Ronald Reagan said something, they listened.
		And that's that's a I think we all need to learn that lesson every once in a while.
		We need strong presidents that will make, you know, you prevent these things by being strong and ready.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And of course we have the even most recent Afrakas with Iraq with regard to inspections.
		Our inspectors were not allowed to inspect for the longest period of time while they were no doubt moving around whatever they wanted.
		Then we began to move a lot of military hardware and Iraq said, okay, we give in.
		We give in completely.
		Come on back.
		They came back and now they're not allowed to inspect and we look like a great big paper tiger, right?
		So you're well to point out the difference in administrations and the way they react to threat.
		All right, we're going to continue with Bill Donaldson as we discuss Flight 800 and we're going to try and discern when we come back where we should go, what we should do, or is it case closed?
		Here's the cartoon.
		Believe it or not, this is Coast to Coast A.M. Back now to Bill Donaldson.
		Thanks for hanging in with us, Bill.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I've enjoyed it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, a lot of calls here.
		A lot of people want to talk to you, so let's go to them.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, this is Ralph from Escondito.
		I'm an engineer, and I have a couple technical questions.
		It's a great presentation.
		First, doesn't the Air Force use GN2, gaseous nitrogen, to passivate its empty fuel tanks to prevent sparks?
		Second, you mentioned that you thought the missile was an Iranian AIM XXX Phoenix missile.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He said he used that as an example of one that would have worked.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		It is a real possibility of a threat.
		In other words, we sold the when the Shah of Iran was still in power, he bought many F-14s from production, and we sold him the missile.
		That missile is an air-to-air missile, but it can be easily converted, relatively easily converted, to a surface-firing missile.
		And in fact, it was considered by the Navy back in 1970 to do that as a point-defense weapon.
unidentified		But it would have to be modified because, as you said, it's an over-the-horizon air-to-air missile.
unidentified		Is there any evidence that they have converted a Phoenix to ground-to-air?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the problem is that we probably wouldn't get the evidence because it's relatively simple.
		What you have to do is take the launching rail off the aircraft, and there's a cooling system that goes to the seeker head on the missile that doesn't have to be taken off.
		But with about 500 pounds of hardware and the missile rail, you could bolt it to a superstructure of a small boat, and you have a deadly, I mean a really deadly anti-aircraft weapon.
unidentified		Now, have you thought of taking this whole scenario to one of these forensic animators and making your own animation and flooding the country with it just the way the PIA did?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, but there are a few bucks involved, and I'm just a retired 05, you know.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		But, uh...
unidentified		The End From the Kingdom of Nigh, Coast to Coast A.M. continues with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, you've gone to some members of Congress.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and I'm glad you brought that up.
		Oh, I forgot to talk about nitrogen andering, too.
		I'll get right back to that.
		But the members of Congress, the one in particular that I talked to was Mr. Trafficant from the 17th District of Ohio.
		He's a Democrat, but very keenly aware of this situation.
		And long story short, he interceded with the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Aviation, Mr. James Duncan from Tennessee.
		And Congressman Duncan essentially assigned Congressman Trafficant the duty to further investigate this mishap.
		So what I'm doing is whatever I'm able to come up with, I'm in almost daily communication with his chief of staff, and we're working the problem.
		Now back to nitrogen andering, the Air Force question.
		That's a very good question because it's one of the things that Mr. Hall surfaced as a solution to this.
		The problem is that the Air Force was forced, not forced, but they went to the nitrogen and nerding back when the military was using JP-4 in the Vietnam era.
		In those days, if you were going to land in, say, Hanoi, not Hanoi, but South Vietnam there, Da Nang, and any one of the Viet Cong happened to have a rifle loaded with tracers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The magic bullet.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		One single tracer through a partially empty JP-4 tank, you do have volatile fumes in there, particularly when the fuel is cold and the airplane's descending.
		There's a window there where the Golden BB could get you a whole big airplane.
		And they decided to engineer around that with their C-5, and there may be some combat aircraft, too, that have nitrogen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But again, with JP-1, which is what the TWA Flight 800 has.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's Jet A1.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		It's JP is a military A1, all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There is no way.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No, there's no way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Short of, you said, an extreme trauma, as in shrapnel, for example, passing through the tank.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		or shockwave from the bursting weapon when a high-explosive goes off close to an aircraft and I know from personal experience in North Vietnam I had an 85mm round go off probably 80 or 90 feet away from the aircraft and I almost lost the filling out of my teeth you know it really really rattles the airplane and when I landed back aboard the Intrepidant I didn't have a single hole in the airplane but I believe me I was it
art bell ▲ ● ▼		made me a believer in anti-aircraft ordinance so again so we're clear with all of your expertise and all of your knowledge and all you all the work you've done on this thus far you flat-out declare the CIA depiction of what occurred and the conclusions that they have given to the American people to be flat-out lies right and there's a there's a reason for that the reason they did this
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		um they based that they have a tremendous problem with all these eyewitnesses number one what they saw and they found a way to to if you pay close attention to that tape they tried to use the fact that people heard sounds before they looked and saw something and when you do speed of sound analysis from the actual crash point the closest point of land the airplane would be like 42 to 44 seconds of sound travel time
		from the airplane uh...
		you know explosion point and then they jumped on that they said okay that's these people couldn't have possibly seen anything except after the fact because of this this distance there here's the the fatal flaw is that the people i've talked to didn't hear the explosion out at sea they heard missile launch noises which are you get a bang thundering noise sure and then a crackling sound as the as the missile goes supersonic and and
		goes outbound and and one eyewitness we didn't get in here would tell you that he heard a boom crackle and then about five seconds later a
		boom crackle and then he sees one missile going outbound at a 45 degree angle disappearing exploding then he sees the parts falling on fire coming through a thin undercast and then he hears two more explosions what see and that's the problem that the CIA tape they didn't talk to those people that were very explicit about this and really do a good sound analysis I'm curious Mr. Donaldson
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why would the CIA, just out of curiosity, be the one charged with coming up with an animation for an investigation that was conducted by the FBI?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Because it's an impressive name.
		This whole thing is a public relations stunt that cost the American taxpayer $70 million.
		That's the bottom line.
		And when you can draw in, you know, I mean, what more prestige?
		Let me tell you, I hate to be in a position to be running down employees of any of these agencies because 99% of them are great Americans.
		And I honestly believe and feel that.
		I mean, I'm a federal guy myself, okay?
		But what's happened is that the political leadership has got a priority mission.
		And that mission is to take Flight 800 and snap the book shut on history on that baby and put it on the shelf.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what's happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How do we keep the book from closing?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, the best way to do that is to follow the Constitution.
		I mean, I hate to be, I don't know if it's melodramatic or not, but our congressmen are us.
		They're our last chance to seek justice in this thing, if you will, or to rectify the record.
		And I think the best way to get interest in the aviation subcommittee is, you know, a postcard or something like that.
		If people are really interested in the Flight 800 thing, the best thing that could happen is if they convene a congressional inquiry or at least hearings on this thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are there any particular representatives that you would think would be best?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		The easiest, the best to remember would be the chairman of the aviation subcommittee in the House, because they've already taken some action.
		that's mr. James Duncan of Tennessee.
		If you address something to him, all you'd have to do is say Congressman Duncan, House of Representatives, Chairman, Aviation Subcommittee.
		And it'll get to the committee and it'll get to the staffers that realize that there's somebody awake out here and still concerned about this issue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Donaldson, do you want to be subpoenaed?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I don't care.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		You mean by them?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
		I mean, I didn't sure, I was wondering who you meant was going to subpoena me, but sure.
		In fact, I would expect that I would be in a committee hearing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would it be reasonable that listeners reacting to what they have heard tonight, the expert testimony, would write to the chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, James Duncan, and request that hearings be held and that you specifically be subpoenaed?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I don't know that you'd have to worry about me, because I'm already into this thing up to my eyebrows, and I would imagine that I would be on one of the panels just already.
		But I'm not looking for personal recognition in this thing, and I hate to, I just don't want to leave anybody with that impression.
		This is about constitutional abuse, I think.
		And it's time that some of the folks that get to this elite feeling where they think they can get away with this, they just need to be, speed brakes need to be put out on them.
		That's all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		First time caller line.
		You're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
		Art Bill.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm calling from Washington State.
		All right.
		I work for the Boeing company in Everett.
		I've been I'm a tool maker.
		I work out in production sometimes.
		I've been inside the center fuel tanks, as he described.
		They're about six feet tall.
		I'm 5'10.
		I can walk through there.
		And I know people think, well, you work for the company.
		You're going to say good things.
		But I know for a fact about the product, but I know for a fact that that safety is built into those airplanes with redundancy.
		I mean, you've got four or five backup systems to take care of things.
		They're a well-built airplane.
		And I just think that what's going on is they've just been trying to cover it up.
		And I think what the government needs to do is come forward and tell the people that, hey, we're not immune to worldwide terrorism, that they can hit here too.
		And I think that's what's happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that to imagine or to even suggest publicly that it might have been terrorism or to conclude that it might have been terrorism without specifically being able to point a finger and know who did it and who to go after would be such a negative,
		would have such a negative impact on the aircraft industry, on tourism, on our own national morale, that they might be indeed inclined to continue a lie.
		Is that out of line, Mr. Dolanz?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't think so.
		And to the gentleman that just called, he's exactly right.
		That aircraft is one of the safest, it probably is the safest way a human being can move across the face of the earth statistically.
		And really, that's the crutch of the government's problem, trying to pin it on the airplane, because it is so safe.
		For instance, there's no wiring in that centerline tank that can provide the spark, number one.
		And things like the pumps that pump fuel out of the tank are mounted outside the tank.
		It's only the impeller that's on the inside.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are some who have speculated that the impeller somehow broke loose and penetrated the tank.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I've seen them speculate on everything from UFOs to meteor impacts.
		I mean, when the chief safety guy in aviation for the United States surfaces, maybe it got hit by a meteor, we're all in trouble.
		That's not professional, and it's ludicrous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wild Hardline, You're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
unidentified		Hello.
		This is Gabriel in L.A. Yes, sir.
		Okay.
		I applaud you, Bill, on the research you've done.
		It's great service.
		It's an amazing story.
		Three questions, real quick.
		If the CIA and the FBI know this was an attack, does that automatically mean Janet Reno or the President know or informed of this?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're in a supposition here, but my personal answer would be I just can't imagine, knowing the command structure, that I know the way it works in the military.
		If we get attacked in the military anywhere in the world, we have a duty to inform the White House via flash precedence message within five minutes.
		and also the justice department the justice they've got to be involved because the f_b_i_ is uh...
		The Aegis equipment, for instance, that the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco was using to sniff chemicals when that material was brought up from the seafloor is the best technology for that in the world.
		They had At least 12 positive hits for high explosive residue on this aluminum.
		The manufacturer is telling me that that's extremely rare on a piece of slick aluminum to get a false positive.
		What happened was Janet Reno had a meeting and allegedly Mr. Hall, this is all in a published article that I read, but to get to the quick bottom line is they got these 12 hits and allegedly Mr. Calstrom said, hey, this is evidence.
		This is physical evidence of a, quote, criminal act.
		Allegedly, they turned this around and said we have to cooperate it with further backup analysis.
		Now, the problem with doing that is the trace levels were so low because this stuff goes into solution and salt water real fast to begin with, and it was washed in fresh water before they sniffed it, they did get the hits, but now it's so nebulous that unless you use the same equipment, you probably won't get the hit again.
		And the way they do those counter checks is they use a different method.
		And the other method was less sensitive than the tactical equipment that was used there when they brought the stuff ashore.
		So bottom line is they only got two positives when they rechecked with inferior equipment at the FBI lab.
		And based on that, they said those two positives were from inside the cabin and they tied it to a dog training test that was done in St. Louis, which, again, is stretching the imagination pretty far.
unidentified		Okay, second question.
unidentified		Can you paint us a picture of how easy it would be for a terrorist or some entity to come in, set up a rocket launch and escape?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		If you're asking, tactically it would be extremely easy.
		If you asked me, "Could I do it if I had access to the right world?" weapon?
		Yeah.
		And the way to do it would be to use a ship that's probably 70 or 80 feet long, a small boat or a boat or a small ship.
		And the timing of this thing is perfect for a terrorist act because the sun was literally going down when the missile was fired.
		It was fired, I believe, from the data I've got from inland to sea.
		So if you miss, the weapon goes way out to sea.
		But if you hit, the chaos that is created tactically would allow anybody to escape.
		I mean, because everybody's attention immediately goes to a rescue effort in this situation.
		The fire is just so awesome.
		You can see it from 150 miles away at high altitude in an airplane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller, if you have another question, I'm going to have to hold you over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You want to hold?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Mr. Donaldson, we have yet one hour to go.
		is there a way people can uh...
		press or uh...
unidentified		people can contact you uh...
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		probably the best way to do that would be through accuracy in uh...
		media in washington d_c_ uh...
		instead of coming directly to my Oh, don't do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you give their number?
unidentified		Yeah, boy.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I may be putting them with the size of your audience.
		I may overwhelm them here.
		I don't have it right handy.
		I can get it, though, shortly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Very good.
		People can find the accuracy and media number in Washington, D.C. anyway.
		And short of that, folks, Mr. Donaldson suggests you jot off a postcard or a letter to the chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, James Duncan, and urge a congressional investigation.
		Correct, sir?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		There is already a low-level investigation going on, but what they need to do is to complete that, and after the NTSB comes in with their findings, go into a committee hearing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good enough.
		Hold on.
		We'll be right back to you.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Coast to Coast AM You are listening to the best of Art Bell.
unidentified		From the Kingdom of Nine, Coast to Coast AM continues with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, back now to Bill Donaldson.
		And Bill, I'm glad you've stayed with us.
		A few facts, questions, and then back to the phones.
		From David in Anchorage, Alaska.
		Normally, when an aircraft such as the B-747 has a major accident, the first thing the FAA does is ground them all until they figure out what's wrong.
		In this case, not only did it not happen, but very little at all has been heard from Boeing.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		And let me explain something about the average person doesn't realize the effect the NTSB has or the authority that they have by law to do these investigations.
		The worst thing that can happen to Boeing or to TWA is to make a public statement that is divisive or not totally supportive of the NTSB.
		Because if they do that, the NTSB has the authority to sever them from the investigation.
		And that means that their investigators, the corporate investigators, are no longer privy to the inside information.
		Now, that's assuming that they really are to begin with, but it leaves them very vulnerable.
		So you're not going to hear anything that's negative come from either Boeing or TWA until there's a final resolution on this.
		And then they have to worry about the next accident and whether there's any paybacks.
		So I hate to be so brutally blunt about this, but it's a typical question.
		Why doesn't Boeing stand up to them?
		Why doesn't TWA well they really can't because they have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders and the government's got the ultimate big hammer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, in this.
		Art, as I recall, Flight 800 took the place of another 747 that was delayed.
		And I often wondered who or what the other passenger list, the other plane, was.
		Do you know anything about that?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think there's some truth to the fact that LL, that was reported pretty quickly that they were in the same block time and they slid for maintenance reasons or some other reason for at least 30 minutes.
		And then there was immediate supposition that maybe Netanyahu or one of the Israeli officials was on board.
		In fact, I thought that was a possibility for quite a while until I finally was able to track down where Netanyahu was.
		And he was in the, in fact, I think he was in Tel Aviv the day before, and he was in Egypt the day after.
		But it's not unusually for Israeli government officials to travel El Al without announcing their travel plans.
		That would have been obviously sort of a double hit if you're looking at it from the terrorist point of view.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure, I believe that the only major airlines never to experience a terrorist incident would be El Al, isn't that correct?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		As far as I know, because in fact I can tell you from being stationed in Italy that if you remember that one incident where I think it was an American nine-year-old girl killed, there was a terrorist attack directly on the airport waiting area there in Rome.
		And in fact, there was a simultaneous attack, I think, in another European city.
		In any case, what I'm getting at here is the reporting that came out of that incident probably led people to believe that it was the Italian security people that gunned down these, I think there was four or six terrorists that were rolling hand grenades into the crowd, literally.
		But it wasn't.
		It was LL undercover security people that were working as ticket agents and things like that.
		They pulled Uzi submachine guns out of somewhere and they did those people in right there in front of the world.
		And it's that kind of security that their security is extremely good.
		I mean, we just don't have anything that touches it.
		And they have to have that or, you know, they're just a small country with about 4 million people and they're the constant target of these people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was in Jerusalem about a few months ago, and it seemed like about every other person carried a gun.
unidentified		Right.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, and the irony here, and it's the old American West idea in a way, if everybody's armed, you end up with a real polite society.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello, Mr. Donaldson.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Your information is very compelling tonight, especially the debris field.
unidentified		Briefly, I have two points that I'd like you to comment on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, Caller?
unidentified		Calling from Ohio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		I have a close relative who's a pilot for TWA.
		And a couple of months ago, he lent me a copy of the book, Downing of TWA Flight 800, which I think everybody should read.
		First, the book describes some coordinated military exercises in the area.
		And second, it also reports about FBI seizure and cover-up of evidence of an orange missile fuel residue found on seat fabric in the suspected missile path through the cabin.
		Can you shed any light on these points?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can, as to the first part, that book had a large leap in logic on that military exercise.
		There just isn't any real evidence that that occurred, that there was a big military exercise out there.
		Now, the residue on the seats, I'm a little bit, I don't know how to really answer that without having access to the alleged test on the stuff.
		But the seats in that area were in a very high impact zone, and there is a hole that the one I described goes right through that area.
		Now, I just give that one a toss up because I really don't know.
		I hate to say that it was rocket fuel or any one particular thing, but the FBI is saying it was nothing but gum residue or adhesive residue.
		That's possible, too.
		I mean, I can't answer that one with any kind of certainty.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		The book had put forth an explanation of a missile with an inactive warhead passing through the cabin.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I see way too much damage for that.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		In other words, I don't know that, first of all, the hole is only about six inches in diameter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you don't believe the kinetic energy was involved?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or at least that is to say we're not going to be able to do that.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		It's technically possible because a missile can be traveling three times the speed of sound, and if it hits main structural parts of the aircraft, it could deliver what would ultimately be a serious or fatal blow.
		But I see in this debris field, this thing just totally was disintegrated right from the very beginning.
		And it is a wide fanned area of everything.
		I mean, seats, all kinds of parts from outside the airplane and inside the airplane.
		In fact, the first 10 pieces of debris, there's only one piece of external debris in the first ten.
		In other words, you get stuff from inside the cabin.
		So the integrity of the cabin was immediately lost.
		And really, the best way to describe this when you look at it is it was like a freight train.
		I don't know that an inert missile, I think the airplane would fly further and would shed parts for a lot longer time if that's what hit the airplane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
		Hello.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		My name's Gabriel in L.A. Yes, Gabriel.
unidentified		Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on what we were talking about before, but I just followed up with you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gabriel, you're only allowed to call once.
		I appreciate the effort, but that's a hard-fast rule here.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
unidentified		Hi, it's Ron in Houston.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Ron.
unidentified		I want to go back to this thing about the...
		I have a friend whose wife is pretty far up in, I think, British.
		I don't know how far up, but connected enough that this is the rumor I heard through him that was going around the airline industry right after that happened.
		As a matter of fact, Art, it kind of tied in with, I was listening to you the night before that it happened.
		A lady called in and said the moment that our esteemed president was informed of this, he paled and got really shaky and was really shaken up badly.
		And he was kind of panicky from what I heard.
		But anyway, there were not, there was two TWA airliners on the path, one right in front of the other one.
		Now, one of them went up to take off, and it started to take off, experienced some kind of minor difficulty.
		And since there was a TWA flight right behind it, it could drop off, let that TWA flight take off, and then correct it.
		If it could correct its problem, then it could go on and enter the flight pattern behind that airplane and leave.
		And there would be no record of it.
		And that is, in fact, what happened.
		And 800 came up second.
		But the first one supposedly was full of, was headed for Tel Aviv, and it was full of a lot of high-ranking Israeli dignitaries and political powers.
		And I don't know if that's kicking a dead horse that you've already talked about, but it's pointing.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		In fact, when you look at the radar, Flight 900 was only, I think, about 10 miles behind Flight 800 when it went down.
		TWA Flight 900.
		And now that you've mentioned that, I think I need to check and see where the destination of Flight 900 was and if that happened as you described, because that's an interesting, very interesting scenario that would lead to motive a little better if that was true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Welcome to the Rockies.
		You're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
		Hi, where are you?
		I'm Tim calling from Spokane, Washington.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Tim.
unidentified		I spent a number of years over in Germany with the U.S. Army, and I was a Red Eye missile team chief.
		These are the shoulder-fired, sort of like a bazooka, very light.
		Right, right.
		The Stinger replaced it.
		But the Red Eye used to, a lot of them used to be stored at the Miesau Army Depot right around the border of Germany and France.
		And during our tour of duty over there, one of our responsibilities was to go over there and guard that place.
		And in our indoctrination, one of the first things they told us was how people would just walk into that place.
		It was like a supermarket.
		They had a lot of security measures, but it seemed that red-eye missiles, the Stingers, TOW missiles, law missiles would just walk out of the place.
		And so it would be very easy for somebody to get a hold of something like that on the black market, I'm sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's a pretty good question.
		Bill, how hard would it be for you, you've got a big military background, to get hold of a missile that could do what had to be done to bring down Flight 800?
		If you had money and set out to do it, could you get it?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		With the Soviet Union breaking up and with all the subordinate countries it broke down into with their various missile and military inventories, the answer is probably yes.
		If you're a multi-millionaire and maybe from the Mideast and you might be able to pull off a buy of some kind and maybe even finance something, you know, a ship at sea or whatever.
		But all that's pretty much speculation.
		The one thing that I do want to address about the Red Eye and the Stinger is that I don't think either one of those missiles could have possibly been the culprit here because they have tiny warheads.
		They're very small.
		They're obviously designed to be shoulder-fired.
		So you couldn't put a 900-pound missile on your shoulder and launch it.
		But you could disguise something like that very easily in a boat or on a boat, under a lifeboat or life raft, and just unmask it and fire it when you're in range.
		So I just wanted to say that it's not likely that it's a shoulder-fired heat seeker because it's at the very, it would have to be the golden BB to even get to the altitude number one.
		And when it got there, about the best it would do is maybe cripple one engine, that the pilot would turn around and go back and land, and probably everybody would have been fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it would take a lot more explosive power.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		What I'm looking at in this debris field is far more than what you're going to get out of a kerosene pop in a tank or a shoulder-fired small little missile like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		First time caller align.
		You're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
		Hi.
unidentified		Yes, hi.
unidentified		My name is General Cohen from Fairbanks, Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		On June 1997, I received a newsletter from James Bogue Wright that he said, drawing upon his 30 years plus experience in the military, he said that the U.S. Navy and Army were conducting final acceptance tests of an AGCC system in that area, and they did launch an inert Navy anti-missile missile, which brought down that aircraft.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's basically the storyline that T.R.A. Sellinger?
		Yeah, and I think in that time, a lot of people jumped on it because it seemed logical.
		But really, believe me, the media, if the one thing a lot of the liberal media likes to do is sort of step on the military when they get a chance, it seems.
		And I think they really did dig into this pretty quick.
		And they just couldn't come up with anything.
		And like I said earlier in the show, I personally knew the chief of staff down at Airland.
		That's the Navy command that owns all the aircraft carriers on the East Coast.
		And they were baffled about this.
unidentified		I mean, the ships just weren't there.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		That's the bottom line.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		the fact that uh...
		pierre selinger made such a big splash when he uh...
		made his announcement and then of course later was very much discredited right didn't didn't all that make it an awful lot easier for the c_i_a_ and f_b_i_ to come along later i think the current scenario to be more believable for for sure
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And if Pierre Salinger had just said, it appears that the missile shot the airplane down.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		But then, and I met him when he was in Washington here, and he had basically what he told me and the audience he was talking to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bill, hold tight.
		We'll pick up on that after the break.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Coast to Coast AM.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, back now to Bill Donaldson, who's up very late because he's back east.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think you're in Maryland, aren't you, Bill?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		That's correct, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the sun is not far from coming up back there.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm facing west, but yeah, I think you're right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we don't have long to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello there.
		No, I guess not.
		Oh, I didn't push the right button.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		He says.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello there.
		No, East of the Rockies.
		Let's try that.
		You're on the air.
		Okay, for some reason, we're not getting audio from these folks, and I don't have any idea what that reason could be.
		Very strange.
		I'm not used to this happening.
		Let me try one more time.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can barely hear the person in the background, Bill.
		Very unusual.
		I wonder what possibly could be causing this.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I can't hear him either.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		While you're working on that, I could finish that comment about Pierre Salinger that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You met with him, you said.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And the gist of what he really told some press people at a meeting there in D.C., and I was sitting there with him, is that the French had gone through a similar situation where they'd apparently been doing some missile testing in the Mediterranean, and they accidentally shot down an aircraft.
		I don't know how long ago this was, maybe over 20 years ago, and it took him 10 years to admit to the fact.
		So he was very much swayed by what the French had done and immediately jumped to the conclusion that the Americans had done the same thing.
		But, you know, like a lot of times, when you make an assumption, you often get in trouble.
		And I think that's the case here.
unidentified		Thank you.
		You're listening to a rebroadcast of one of Art Bell's most popular programs.
		When you hear phone numbers, please do not call.
		Now, please enjoy this on-core presentation of Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		I'm in New York.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		So you're actually not on the air here.
		I heard you earlier.
		Right.
		Right.
		You know, I commend the Well, I was a Navy commander.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		It's the same as Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force.
unidentified		Okay.
		Well, Commander, you know, I commend you for exonerating the Navy.
		I always found, I think you did that, I always found that kind of preposterous.
		Is that correct?
		You're doing that?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that I wouldn't just say the Navy.
		I've worked with a lot of command and control systems at sea, and the scenario that was in the book was totally unrealistic because the one cardinal rule that you always do safety-wise is you never fire a missile in any proximity of a large population or shipping lanes or air lanes.
		And I can tell you that, and this would apply to the Army and to all the services, that the general officers and the admirals that approve these exercises would probably fire a junior officer that came to them with such a screwy plan.
		I mean, I don't know how to say it any other way than that, but it's a persistent thought.
		I mean, there are people on Long Island that very firmly believe that the Navy was involved and that maybe even the Army was in it and a whole bunch of other folks.
		But I can't find the evidence, and I trust the people when I was in the service with.
		I mean, I personally know the chief of naval operations.
		I haven't talked to him about this, but that's all I can tell you.
		I know I'm an ex-naval officer, and it sounds like I'm making an excuse if you believe the military is involved.
unidentified		No, I don't believe it.
		That's fine.
		But what I want to go over is three hours of programming, just very quickly.
		Going back to Colonel Major Myers at the beginning of the show, at the very beginning of his interview, I think he said that it looked like a shooting star.
		The trajectory.
		Did he hold to that?
		Because a shooting star or a meteorite would always be from high elevation to low elevation.
		I have never heard of they always have a they could have a somewhat a horizontal trajectory at first if it's off coming in at a tangent to the earth, but then eventually it will cascade downward.
		I'm not sure if he's stuck to that or not.
		That certainly can't be a missile from the surface, obviously.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think what happened in his case is that he didn't see the vertical portion of whatever was involved there.
		I think when he looked up, he was seeing the thing moving horizontally with a slight down trajectory from his perspective.
		Now, you have to remember he was only at 200 feet, and he was looking up at something that was at 13,700 feet where the aircraft was.
		And depending on the aspect here, a missile that was going outbound and crossing from his left to his right may give a trajectory to him that would look like that.
		The key to me is that it was fast.
		It was really moving fast.
		And that totally destroys the CIA tape, the idea that the airplane, first of all, they're attributed to doing something that's impossible to do, and that's climb 3,000 feet.
		TWA has made a statement on the record that the airplane can't climb that fast to make that tape valid.
		And even if it was a perfectly normal airplane.
		And so Myers' statement fits where the object was compared To where everybody else saw it, and the relative speed is a key, and that points to a missile.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Well, that's fine.
		But where I began to have a problem with some of your testimony tonight was when you obviously start bringing in political considerations.
		You see, I've been thinking of what would be a motivation for a cover-up all along.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, that was clearly, though, stated as speculation, and I asked him to speculate on that.
unidentified		All right.
		Well, you see, when you talk about motivation, Art, and Mr. Donaldson, come in, Donaldson, you know, your scenario is terrorism.
		That would be, from the Iranians, no less, as one possible consideration.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		That could be any one of three or four different rogue nations.
unidentified		Well, you see, a very simple political analysis that anybody could figure out is that at the time in the summer of 96, if anything would assure President Clinton of reelection, it would be an attack from a rogue nation.
		It would be a terrorist attack.
		There would be no political motivation to cover that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't think that would be easy.
		I disagree 180%.
		I agree, would it?
		I think that indeed seeing something like that, particularly when there could be no response because they had no idea who did it, there could be no attack, would assure a defeat.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I would agree with that.
		And the reason is that it wouldn't matter who the president was at that timing or even what his politics are, if he's presented with a problem that he's had basically an act of war committed on our own territory and he can't figure out who to strike, that would be a dilemma for anyone.
		That's an apolitical statement on that.
		But when you look at who was running, and when November came along, and if the people, the American people thought that we'd come under a terrorist attack and there was no response, you've got a guy like Mr. Dole, who was a World War II hero, and you have Mr. Clinton to pick from.
		I personally think that if there was a terrorist attack and it became known, then that would have been extreme jeopardy for the Clinton administration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I think so.
		I think politically people would have run to Dole at that point, despite their apparent boredom with his campaign.
		Certainly, they would have run toward him.
		That's a pretty simple political conclusion.
		Bill, do you think it's possible or likely that what was done was in retaliation for our downing of an Iranian commercial aircraft?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's an interesting speculation because I keep looking to that.
		The Pan Am 103 disaster, which preceded this by some years under the Bush administration, was never really answered either.
		And we've picked on Gaddafi and blamed him in the scenario that came out of that investigation.
		But there are also tentacles that point into other rogue nations on that deal.
		This is all speculation here because I'm not on the inside of the government.
		But it could be that this is the hot ticket item for those folks in that part of the world to lever the American administration, whoever it might be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's horrible to imagine that we would accept such a quid pro quo.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if you look at Pan M103 or you look at the downing of the Iranian airliner.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Airbus, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Airbus.
		Could we sort of simply accept the downing of Flight 800 quietly and call it even at the international level and hope that nothing else would happen?
		And would that be a reason and a motivation for concluding the investigation as they're apparently trying to do now?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess you could go through that rationale, but I personally would, from experience, the one lesson we should learn in our short history as a nation is that when we've been strong and when we've answered threats with direct confrontation, we fare far better than sticking our head in the sand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is now.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And that Airbus incident, a lot of people don't realize it, but the captain of the Vinciennes was actually under surface attack when that happened.
		I don't know whether you remember that, but the Iranians were firing on him from gunboats.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gunboats.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I recall that, yes.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he was answering with five-inch shells fired from a forward mount.
		And then all of a sudden, they get this contact without a transponder taken off out of Tehran.
		The Board of Inquiry found the American captain totally within his rights of protecting his ship and exonerated him from shooting at that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure, I'm not looking at it as you do, but rather as they might.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And I'm sure, and it really wouldn't have mattered, but the real culprit in that incident from a safety standpoint was that Iran was committing basically an attack against an American military vessel in international waters, and at the same time allowed one of their commercial airliners to take off right over top without turning his transponder on.
		All that captain would have had to have done is to make sure the transponder switch was in the on position and the Ven CN's equipment would have identified him as a friendly airliner.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bill Donaldson.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Good morning, Nark.
unidentified		Good morning, Bill.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		I'm calling from KABC in Los Angeles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		I have a couple questions, and I actually want to let you know a little research that I've done on this regarding this.
		Ray Bream, former late-night talk show host from here in Los Angeles, has a close personal friend of many years named Captain Richard Russell out of Florida.
		He's a retired 747 pilot.
		Are you familiar with him?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I've been down and I've looked at his tape.
unidentified		Okay.
		Okay.
		Well, then you've heard about his phone call he received right after the downing.
		You talked to him about that, I would imagine, as well.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		I think that, well, he and I haven't talked to him in a long time, but he and Pierre Selinger I know met several times, even went over to Paris, I think.
unidentified		Right, but originally within about an hour to two hours after the plane was down, Richard Russell received a phone call from somebody within the Department of Defense stating that we had taken it down.
		And that was the first thing that he got out of the blue.
		And beyond that, looking for a possible motive, I did some research right after the plane went down, and I contacted the French embassy or consulate here in Los Angeles.
		And I asked, were there any real critical French passengers on that aircraft?
		And the one name that I received when they stacked me over a manifest was a name of a guy named Rodolphe Moreau, made the late 20s, son of the president of Moreau Pharmaceuticals, the largest pharmaceutical company in France.
		And he was returning from a multiple months work in Africa working with a tribe that had contracted AIDS that did not get the AIDS symptoms.
		And he'd been working on a vaccination or an anti-something or other.
		I'm not familiar with all the pharmaceutical terms, but had made a trip back to the United States on his way back to France.
		And he was on that aircraft with much of the research that he had worked on in Africa.
		And that's never been brought out in anything I've ever heard of here in the United States.
		I had to get that directly from the French.
		Are you familiar with him at all or in his research?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No, I hadn't really, and I hadn't concentrated on the passengers.
		I sort of left that.
		I figured that was really the FBI's bailiwick.
		I mean, they're pretty good at tracking that stuff down normally.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're going out this more like a forensic expert might go after a murder scene.
		In other words, you're into the hard evidence, the debris field, the impact, what it would have taken, how it could have been done, and how it wasn't, and what didn't happen.
		And again, your conclusion is that there is no way this could have been a simple mechanical failure.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No.
		And it just, none of the physical evidence really supports what is being said.
		And the unprecedented way that it's been done with this gigantic public relations pitch, I can tell you, normally a commercial airliner goes down, it's happened before, the military never even gets involved.
		The government stays out of it.
		Normally they call in the insurance underwriters and they get salvage, civilian salvage teams to go down and look at whatever they can recover.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The military involvement in this was immediate, wasn't it?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		It was immediate, and I think it was ordered right out of the White House or somebody in the direct chain of command.
		And it makes sense on one way that the Navy does have some very good equipment, but it isn't normal procedure, let's put it that way.
		And I mean, if it was the whole thing is, there were so many eyewitnesses that said that it was a missile on the media or looked like something went up and hit the airplane.
		The reaction, I think, was to find out what happened.
		And then I think they ended up containing what they found.
unidentified		Well, Bill, we're about the end of the show here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And again, I would ask that the audience contact Chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, James Duncan, and request a congressional investigation be continued.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		These are sad days in America, Bill.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hate to leave the show on a negative note.
		I know this is a very hard for a lot of people to think about this, but I always kind of lean back on something that I hold very precious, and that's the Constitution.
		There isn't really any administration that can hurt this country, no matter how bad it is, the way the Constitution is constructed.
		If we all just remember what it says and stick to the rules, time will get us past through any of this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hope that time brings the truth, and time doesn't bring the ability, as we do too frequently, to revise history.
		And the last memory of Flight 800 is not the CIA cartoon, but rather a comprehensive investigation that is way overdue at the congressional level.
		So, Bill, I want to thank you for being here, and I hope what we have done tonight will bear fruit.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Art, I sure appreciate the opportunity to speak to your listeners, and you have a good day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You too.
		Take care, Bill.
		That's it, folks.
		Bill Donaldson, I appreciate you all listening to this, and I thought it was long overdue in view of the report last week.
		In fact, it demands attention.
		Tomorrow night, Major Ed Dames is going to be my guest, and if you've been wondering as I have what this discontinuity is, the mystery ends tomorrow night.

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