Two years after TWA Flight 800's mysterious midair explosion, Coroner Charles Wetli says he doesn't know if he has a case of 230 accidental deaths, 230 homicides or something else.

Wetli, the coroner for New York's Suffolk County, says his preliminary finding is the obvious: "airplane crash." However, the manner of death for all 230 aboard the Paris-bound jumbo jet July 17, 1996, remains "pending."

The simple words accent the complexity, mystery and conflict involved in investigating Flight 800's crash, the nation's second most deadly civil air disaster. The victims are known but the "how" and "why" may never be found.

The FBI's criminal inquiry into the crash officially is in the "pending inactive" category. An agency spokesman said the status is not uncommon and quickly pointed to the bureau's most famous "pending inactive" case: The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

To the FBI, that status means the case is open just enough to jump in with both feet if new evidence surfaces.

To critics of the investigation and some of the victims' families readying lawsuits, that status means open just enough to keep investigative files under official wraps.

It's that cloud of secrecy that fuels an international buzz that keeps the TWA 800 inquiry alive on the Internet and with groups like Accuracy in Media and conspiracy watchers everywhere.

The riddle is just too tantalizing -- too many eyewitnesses with divergent stories, too many conflicting conclusions among agencies such as the CIA and the National Transportation Safety Board, too many unanswered questions, too many facts just out of reach.

Some of the most tantalizing leads come from a series of Freedom of Information requests filed by The Press-Enterprise and others:

· There was unacknowledged U.S. military activity along the Northeastern seaboard the night TWA Flight 800 went down.

In November 1996, Navy Rear Adm. Edward Kristensen said a Navy P-3 anti-submarine patrol plane and the guided missile cruiser Normandy, 185 miles south, were "the only two assets that the Navy had operating off of the East Coast . . . in the vicinity or close to the TWA 800 crash site."

Now the Navy acknowledges the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its planes were active in the same military exercise areas as the Normandy. More submarines and surface vessels were between the P-3 and the Normandy than has been publicly revealed. The exact number depends on where the Normandy was situated; Navy records show the ship at different places at the same time.

· Documents indicate four mystery ships were within six miles of the crash site at the moment TWA 800 exploded.

A Navy captain assigned to the Pentagon told an Atlantic Fleet watch officer about 24 hours after the crash to keep the names of three merchant ships that could have been near Flight 800 "in-house Navy for the time being." The directive was noted in Atlantic Fleet logs released under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Federal Aviation Administration radar captured four unidentified tracks "consistent with the speed of a boat" within three to six miles of the jumbo jet's course at the time of its midair breakup. One vessel, less than three miles from the crash scene, was headed southeast away from the area at 30 knots (34.5 mph) and another was headed toward the plane's path at 20 knots (23 mph). None of the ships has been publicly identified. Navy cruisers, frigates and destroyers can operate at speeds above 30 knots.

NTSB spokeswoman Shelly Hazle says the NTSB has no idea of the ships' identities and isn't concerned because that's the FBI's territory. FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette says he doesn't know anything about the ships but that the agency stands by its November pronouncements: There is no evidence to indicate a bomb, missile or criminal act downed Flight 800 and the U.S. military was not involved or at fault.

· Further study indicates the FBI misidentified radar tracks.

On Nov. 18, the FBI assistant director in charge of the investigation said ex-White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger was wrong in his assertion that four unidentified radar images near Flight 800, seconds before its breakup, were evidence of a missile.

"The radar return from the so-called `Salinger' report is and was and always will be a commercial flight, not a missile," said James Kallstrom, who has since retired from the FBI. "It was a positive -- positively identified as a commercial flight, Jet Express Flight 18."

But NTSB reports citing FAA, Navy and private radar evidence show the Jet Express 18 track is about 16 miles north of the ones to which Salinger referred. The radar symbols for the mystery images are different than those for Jet Express 18.

Salinger's radar blips are now officially labeled "false returns," images that can be created by temperature inversions. The NTSB said the images came no closer than 6 nautical miles (6.9 miles) to Flight 800 and never turned toward the jetliner, as Salinger had claimed.

Air traffic control experts, speaking on condition of anonymity, said missiles sometimes appear and disappear quickly on FAA radar just as the mystery "false returns" do.

· Test results conflict about the contents of red residue.

In March 1997, freelance journalist and ex-Seal Beach policeman James D. Sanders said red residue found on a piece of the jetliner's seats was consistent with exhaust from solid fuel for rockets. A missile scientist said the elements were consistent with rocket fuel. Sanders used that and other evidence to conclude a missile with an inert warhead shot down Flight 800. His evidence and conclusions were published in The Press-Enterprise.

FBI and NTSB officials said the red residue was adhesive and that their tests showed it to be 3M's Scotch-Grip 1357 High Performance Contact Adhesive. However, Scotch-Grip 1357 is green, not red.

Three independent laboratory tests show Scotch-Grip 1357's makeup is significantly different than the residue Sanders had tested independently in a Southern California laboratory.

The test the NTSB commissioned the National Aeronautic and Space Administration to conduct on the adhesive and Flight 800 seats is so dissimilar to Sanders' test that the results "are like comparing apples and oranges," according to Semtec Laboratories of Phoenix, Ariz., a private test laboratory.

Laboratory manager Ed Holdsworth, who examined the conflicting test reports at the request of The Press-Enterprise, said they showed the adhesive and red residue differences to be significant.

"Clearly the data do not support the statement that the analyses are `consistent with' the residue being 3M adhesive," his report said. But he cautioned he also could not say the red residue was consistent with rocket propellent, in part because of "the lack of any basic data on what the residue from a solid fuel rocket motor should contain."

Two independent tests at a branch of the Los Alamos National Laboratory at Florida State University determined the 3M adhesive and seating material from a TWA sister plane to Flight 800 were missing almost half the elements found in the red residue Sanders had tested. Of the eight elements common to the 3M product and the red residue, most were present in significantly smaller quantities in the adhesive.

The FBI's original samples and Sanders' sample also came from different spots, according to investigators. The FBI's came from inside a plastic inset on seatbacks while Sanders' was fabric from the top ridge of a seat.

· Experts disagree about explosions and Flight 800's death plunge.

A CIA analysis done at the FBI's request and based on FBI interviews concluded that witnesses did not see a missile or rocket streaking toward Flight 800 before it exploded. Instead, the CIA said, witnesses saw flaming bits of aircraft or fuel falling as the plane plunged toward the Atlantic Ocean. The CIA based its analysis on sound and sight observations of four witnesses culled from more than 200, who were pared from more than 400 observers.

The FBI used the CIA analysis to debunk witnesses who said a missile downed the jetliner.

The CIA based much of its sight-sound analysis on conclusions that the plane, after being crippled at about 13,700 feet and losing its nose within seconds, rose to 17,000 feet before plummeting earthward.

NTSB documents, based on multiple radar readings and aviation physics, puts the plane's height at 15,000 feet before it heads downward. That contradicts the CIA's sight-sound analysis, critics contend.

FBI and CIA investigators also said witnesses' attention was drawn to the midair tragedy by exploding fuel vapors ripping the center fuel tank apart. But the sound described by witnesses is not consistent with an explosion of the center fuel tank, a Sandia National Laboratories explosion acoustics expert told NTSB officials.

The explosive force "determined by witness accounts is equivalent to about 1 ton of TNT," the NTSB report quotes the Sandia expert as saying. "This is many times more than what would be expected in only a center fuel tank explosion.

"An explosion external to the airplane is theorized."

· Problems and rivalries within the investigation have led some to call for an investigation of the investigation.

The case's lead detectives -- the NTSB and FBI -- have been unhappy partners more than once, as have supporting agencies, according to official statements and documents, some released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Within days of the crash, the FBI blocked NTSB investigators from interviewing eyewitnesses, including those who thought they saw a missile strike the airliner. While the NTSB was having the Navy help salvage crash debris, the FBI was investigating Navy units as potential suspects.

When Federal Aviation Administration radar technicians said they found radar images indicating a "high speed target" may have "merged" with Flight 800, NTSB officials unsuccessfully pressed the FAA to recant. When Navy investigators identified three merchant ships as possibly being near Flight 800, a Pentagon Navy captain asked Atlantic Fleet officials to keep the information "in house."

Hundreds of pages of documents show that top crash investigators still have been less than candid about elements of the costliest and most extensive civilian crash inquiry in U.S. history.

The NTSB, which said it left the bomb and missile investigations up to the FBI, said its experts believe Flight 800 exploded in midair after a spark from an as-yet-unfound source broached mechanical safety barriers and ignited volatile fumes in the wing's center fuel tank.

NTSB Chairman James Hall warned the public at a December hearing in Baltimore that the probable cause of the crash may never be known.

Some critics say the investigators themselves need to be investigated. Retired Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the crash should be re-investigated, the FBI should not be involved and Congress should investigate the FBI's handling of the case. Moorer said he believes "all evidence points to a missile."

Moorer recently was used as a source in a CNN report claiming the U.S. used nerve gas against defectors in Laos in 1970. Moorer did not claim personal knowledge of nerve gas use, but his comments were used to support the report's conclusions. CNN has since retracted the story.

On Dec. 12, NTSB Chairman Hall told a press conference closing the Baltimore hearings that the NTSB was not responsible for the FBI's investigation. Because it was "unclear for so long" whether a bomb or missile might have been involved, "we had two parallel investigations," Hall said, adding that he trusted the FBI.

Conflicting statements have been given about whether a criminal investigation into the crash was conducted.

FBI Director Louis Freeh told the House Judiciary Committee's crime subcommittee in June 1997 that for TWA Flight 800, "We do not have a criminal investigation either officially or otherwise. The National Transportation Safety Board is the lead agency; we're assisting them."

On July 10, 1997, Kallstrom, the FBI's lead TWA investigator, told the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's aviation subcommittee: "As this matter continues to be an active criminal investigation on our part, I know you will appreciate the restrictions that are placed on me and the FBI and will understand the limits this fact may impose on my statements and responses."

FBI representatives still refuse to answer media questions because of the "ongoing criminal investigation."

Almost two years after the air disaster, the cause remains officially unknown.

The Suffolk County medical examiner wields the power to assign an official cause of death for the 230 people who perished in the Flight 800 disaster. Speaking through his administrative assistant, Norma Dill, Wetli said last week that he would not assign homicide, accident, or any other cause until he receives more conclusive evidence.

Published 7/17/1998