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Dec. 1, 1998 - Art Bell

01:20:41

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - TWA Flight 800 Investigation - Cmdr. Bill Donaldson

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28:19

william donaldson

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everybody, indeed, from the high deserts stretching in the west from the Tahitian and Hawaiian island chains 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 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 Meriches 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 Brett.
		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's 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 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 ▲ ● ▼		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.
		There was nothing about this that was unique and said to be this is a missile.
		So I didn't make, 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 black off 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.
		It looked for all the world to me like ordnance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ordinance.
		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.
		Now, 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 the 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 the 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 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 describes 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 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 AM.
unidentified		This is Coast to Coast AM.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 Merchants 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 Santa Maricha's 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 Nine, more coast-to-coast AM 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.
		All right.
		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 noticed that.
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 ordnance 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 Johnson Nunu, 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 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		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 this beautiful evening, very clear, light wind, light to moderate wind.
		And 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, you know, 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 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.
		You know, the flare was getting smaller.
		And then it took the sharp left, and you could see the smoke trail, sharp left.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You could see a smoke trail.
unidentified		And then there was the explosion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		then 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.
unidentified		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, he, 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.
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.
		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 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 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 it was just just sort of a follow up and they looked something It was definitely like something had changed.
		And 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 and 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.
		As a matter of fact, I think I just spent a longer period of time with you by several times than the FBI apparently spent with you.
unidentified		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I want to thank you, and we will continue with Bill Donaldson after the break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 Art Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		This is 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, who, 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 Wing's 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 plans 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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're not doing a movie?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Nothing like that, eh?
		That's not the program.
		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 ▲ ● ▼		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 tacos 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.
		It's a 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.
		And 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 and 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 Mr. Hall and myself, but 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 in 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 in the ambient air at the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Alright, 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.
		Is there any way that could have happened?
unidentified		No.
unidentified		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.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Okay.
		Now, what I found out when I did the little simple two-minute test, it cost me about $15 for a thermos and a thermometer.
		The NTSB 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, 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 10,000 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 ▲ ● ▼		That's simply not 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.
		Coast to Coast AM 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.
unidentified		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.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		And scouring, they call it, where the metal actually looks like it's like an orange peel or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 a big piece that contains the door.
		And when that happened, it was the beginning of the nose coming off the aircraft, which happened very, very quickly.
unidentified		The Air Force The Air Force
unidentified		From the Kingdom of Nineveh, across the country, around the world, and throughout the universe, this is Coast to Coast AM 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 hip 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 on 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.
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 line 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 that'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 NTSBO?
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		No.
		You're hearing it for the first time, and this is a product of the 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.
		Go right ahead.
		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, you know, 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, that 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.
		And that's what the debris field's 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.
		Mr. Donaldson, Pierre Salinger, as you well know, stuck his neck way out and claimed he had evidence of a friendly fire missile accident.
		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 Airland 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.
unidentified		I don't know.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		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 ▲ ● ▼		The musical 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.
		Goths saw that one, and so did Major Myers.
		But when you go further to the east, I had an eyewitness that I 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 the radar tape, and that's when the transponder went dead.
		It was indicating exactly 380 knots.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		13,50, 13,5.
william donaldson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, 13.5.
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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's fine.
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 is fired, it's totally all by itself.
		Capable of reaching what altitude, Mr. 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 Mark Bell.

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