With this week's acknowledgment that the National Transportation Safety Board is looking into a theory that electromagnetic interference may have caused the explosion of TWA Flight 800 two years ago, investigators again face an irksome question: Did a U.S. military unit accidentally cause the Paris-bound jumbo jet to break up off the shore of New York's Long Island and kill all 230 aboard?

No, the FBI, Navy, Pentagon and NTSB's investigators have said to previous suggestions of military involvement in causing the nation's second deadliest civil air disaster.

Yes, says a cadre of friendly-fire advocates who have included retired Navy officers, former Kennedy-era White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, airline pilots who fly East Coast air corridors restricted by military activity, free-lance journalists and members of the public, some of whom proclaim themselves "citizen investigators."

Long before the electromagnetic interference theory, "friendly fire" theorists had a list of reasons to suspect the Boeing 747 was the victim of a military accident. They cite ships off shore, rocket-like streaks in the sky seconds before Flight 800 exploded, other incidents where missiles or jet fighters came close to airliners, and even a military drone that went out of control the evening of July 17, 1996, the night Flight 800 crashed.

While the truth may never be known, a series of inquiries under the federal Freedom of Information Act has produced documents showing the FBI was not being candid in earlier statements about military activity in the Atlantic Ocean near the scene of the crash.

Thousands of pages of official records, many released to The Press-Enterprise in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, do not point to military responsibility.

The documents do show a busy field of exercises, some involving the sophisticated electronic warfare activities that led Harvard University Professor Elaine Scarry to suggest electromagnetic interference should be considered as a fourth possible cause for Flight 800's crash because of the proximity of military units at the time of the crash.

Mechanical failure, a bomb and a missile strike were early suspects in the crash investigation but the FBI has ruled out the latter two.

Almost four months after the crash, Navy Rear Adm. Edward Kristensen, who directed the Navy's support of the Flight 800 investigation and debris recovery, said one Navy P-3 and the guided missile cruiser USS 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."

Documents show that was not the case:

· The Navy's aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt has never been among the ships publicly listed as out to sea that night. Yet, the carrier was at sea and its planes involved in round-the-clock exercises that extended across a huge reach of ocean along the Virginia and Maryland coasts, according to Navy documents.

· Units of a submarine group operating in the military exercise area beginning less than 20 miles from the crash site have yet to be identified.

· Four mystery radar targets, believed to be ships, were within six miles of the crash site at the moment TWA 800 exploded. The NTSB does not know their identities and the FBI's Flight 800 spokesman said he did not know about the ships or the extent to which they were investigated. The four mystery vessels were spotted by shore radar units. None is detected responding to the Flight 800 disaster.

· An Atlantic Fleet watch officer was told 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 identities of those ships still have not been released.

· The USS Normandy, a guided missile cruiser that non-official sources early on said fired a missile that mistakenly hit Flight 800, is listed in two different locations at 8 p.m., a half-hour before the crash, and two different positions at the time of the disaster.

A number of other submarines and military aircraft also were involved in exercises in the area. The key to calculating whether any of those units could have been involved in the crash seems to hang on the position of the Normandy. And it's that position that is most in doubt.

According to conflicting reports and documents, the Normandy was 185 to 290 miles south of the crash site.

The closer range puts three or more subs, a patrol plane and carrier exercises in proximity to the Normandy; the outer limit adds more subs, a guided missile frigate and carrier jets to the pool of military units operating in the vicinity.

The distance also adds or subtracts certain weapons as potential suspects.

In new-age warfare, that could be an important factor.

Control of some missiles and drones can be passed from ship to airplane to ground units and strike beyond the launcher's individual targeting capabilities.

The Normandy's closest position, "185 miles south," puts Flight 800 within range of the ship's combat radar but beyond its anti-aircraft missiles, which have a listed range of 100 miles; the farthest position -- 290 miles -- puts the TWA flight out of reach of the Normandy's radar, which can track targets at ranges around 200 miles.

The ship was moored about 20 miles from JFK Airport -- Flight 800's takeoff point -- the morning of the crash. The Normandy left for Norfolk, Va., its homeport, at 9:05 a.m., according to the ship's deck log.

The cruiser's missile capabilities include the Tomahawk and Harpoon for land and ship targets. Its Standard missiles are supersonic defensive weapons designed to kill attacking aircraft or missiles up to 100 miles away and 80,000 feet high.

None of the ship's eight Standards was fired and it had no Tomahawk or Harpoon missiles aboard for that trip, according to Atlantic Fleet responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.

If the Normandy was 290 miles south of the crash site, then the attack submarines USS Oklahoma City and USS Boise were north of the Normandy; the special forces submarine James K. Polk was within the same arc; the attack sub USS Albany, guided missile frigate USS Estocin and fleet auxiliary ship USNS Lenthall nearby. Another half-dozen ships were 50 to 140 miles south of that point.

· Some missile exercises were scheduled the day and evening Flight 800 went down, but they were to the south and involved National Aeronautic and Space Administration tests from Wallops Island, Va., and Navy ships.

In addition, a Navy unmanned aerial vehicle went out of control that evening and crashed in the northern Virginia countryside.

The Navy's new computerized warfare systems helped fuel speculation friendly fire downed Flight 800, but no evidence of their involvement has been uncovered.

Cooperative Engagement Capability, or CEC as it is known, enables ships to fire missiles at targets the crew itself has never identified and permits other air, ground or sea units to adjust the weapon's path in flight. The program, based on advanced computer technology, led to speculation that a ship might have fired a missile at one target, with the crew not knowing the weapon actually struck another.

Both East Coast ships capable at the time of such warfare, the cruisers Anzio and Cape St. George, were in port in Virginia the night of the crash, according to Navy documents.

There was some cooperative combat activity that night but it had to do with computer tests, not live-fire exercises, according to Navy responses to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The CEC center at Dam Neck, Va., reported problems with its computer software and hardware after linking up earlier in the day with the Anzio and Cape St. George in preparation for sea trials the next day -- the day after Flight 800 went down.

A CEC live-fire exercise was conducted in the Atlantic off the Maryland coast on Sept 11, 1996, less than two months after Flight 800 went down.

In the demonstration, the cruisers Anzio and Cape St. George, sisters of the Normandy, teamed their radar to knock down a missile-like drone launched by the Navy frigate USS Clark.

The Anzio-Cape St. George teamwork allowed the second ship to extend its radar coverage from an 8-mile radius to a 25-mile radius and knock down the incoming drone with a missile, according to Defense Department accounts.

The newest question surrounding possible military involvement is under study by the Defense Department's Joint Spectrum Center in Annapolis, Md.

Strong electronic energy generated by radar, military tracking equipment, jamming devices and electronic countermeasures can be hazardous to a plane's health, according to Defense Department research papers cited by Harvard's Scarry.

As many as 24 service members were killed in the 1980s in air accidents believed caused by electromagnetic sources, according to Scarry's research.

The military considers bursts of electromagnetic energy a weapon, according to published studies, and now shield aircraft and ships to try to counter the problems. Civilian aircraft have no comparative requirement.

July 17, 1996 -- Flight 800's crash date -- was a busy day in a busy week for the military along the Northeast seaboard, according to official documents.

Air Force and Navy jet fighters, submarines, an errant Navy drone flight, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, landing ships, elite special forces, the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and its planes, NASA missile shots, gunnery exercises, missile tracking exercises, computerized tests of over-the-horizon warfare programs and anti-submarine activities were among the units and approved operations.

The exercises peaked during the afternoon, most before Flight 800 arrived in New York from Greece, and waned into the evening, according to copies of messages and documents used to request, approve and monitor the activities.

Three submarines -- the Trepang, Albuquerque and Wyoming -- were the closest Navy ships now acknowledged. Submarine Group 2 also had a large military exercise area reserved for round-the-clock operations 20 miles from the crash site.

A review of standard weaponry aboard the subs suggests they are an unlikely source for a surface-to-air missile. Jane's Publications missile expert Paul Beaver, however, says the U.S. Navy has experimented with sub-launched anti-aircraft missile systems. Some subs carry short-range shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles for shore missions. No publicly released information suggests such weapons were on board the subs near Flight 800.

The absence of apparent missile tracks in radar returns or infrared-sensing satellite images has been used to officially discount the missile theory. Modern missiles, however, are designed to avoid radar and infrared detection. One radar tape does show a short burst of mystery images near Flight 800 just before it crashed but investigators have dismissed those as "false returns," possibly the product of temperature inversions.

The FBI, Navy and North American Air Defense Command said no missiles were fired that night.

· Another conflict relates to what the Normandy was doing at 8:30 p.m., just before Flight 800 went down.

The crew was conducting "basic engineering casualty control exercises," which normally leads to reducing the Aegis electronic combat tracking system to a range "somewhat less than 150 miles," Kristensen said. The ship, therefore, could not have tracked Flight 800 and analysis of the ship's tapes showed no images of the jetliner, he said.

The Normandy's log, which notes every fluctuation in fog, speed, equipment change and on-board exercise, records no exercise or radar reduction that night.

· No Navy unit received as much early scrutiny as a P-3 anti-submarine patrol plane from Brunswick, Maine, according to records obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Navy P-3 was among the first on the crash scene. P-3 crewmembers said they turned back to the crash to offer aid when they heard reports a civilian jetliner exploded in midair.

The four-engine turboprop aircraft passed less than 3 nautical miles (3.45 miles) from and 6,300 feet above Flight 800 about 15 seconds before some unknown "initiating event" began dismembering the jumbo jet to make it crash, according to NTSB records.

Navy documents say the P-3 passed within 2 nautical miles (2.3 miles) of Flight 800. Navy officials were concerned something might have dropped off the P-3 and hit the jetliner, creating some kind of cataclysmic chain reaction. But a post-flight examination of the plane and cargo showed there were no "TFOAS" -- Things Falling Off Aircraft -- a July 31, 1996, message says.

FBI, NTSB, North American Air Defense Command, Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic Fleet headquarters, and Chief of Naval Operations investigators interrogated the 12-member crew within days and exoneratedthem, according to reports.

The P-3 was on its way to a 9 p.m. rendezvous with the nuclear submarine Trepang as part of an exercise.

The Trepang was in a special 7,800-square-mile area set aside just for that operation. The Press-Enterprise previously reported the exercise was to begin at 8 p.m., before Flight 800's takeoff, but the Navy officer providing the information did not adjust for Daylight Saving Time.

Published 7/18/1998