TWA Flight 800

As I write this entry to my blog, the top story of the morning is that in London, a plot to blow up airliners over the ocean has been foiled and security on international flights is now much stricter and they are confiscating all liquids and gels from people's luggage. Coincidentally, last night I watched a documentary on the crash of TWA Flight 800 on the History Channel.

As you may recall, Flight 800 was a New York to Paris Boeing 747 that exploded over Long Island in 1996 killing all 230 passengers. You can read all about it here: Wikipedia on Flight 800.

Now, before I share my thoughts on Flight 800 and this documentary, I want to say that I am a very skeptical guy when it comes to conspiracy theories. I believe that most conspiracy theories are nonsense invented by someone that finds more comfort in believing that there is some evil cabal running world events, then the stark truth, which is that no one is running anything. Furthermore, the reason the truth is often hard to believe is usually due to somebody's unfathomable incompetence.

I am fairly confident that the Roswell crash was a top secret ballooning experiment. I think it is most likely that Oswald acted alone. I think it likely that Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah building.

That said, I must say that Flight 800 is a different story. If I am to believe the official version, then I must accept that the jet spontaneously blew itself up, kinda like the Hindenburg. I am to believe that this is the first time a commercial airline has done this in the entire history of passenger travel. Furthermore, there have been no groundings of 747s because of this tendency for spontaneous combustion. I am to believe that it was a one time thing. Don't worry about it. It won't happen again.

I'm sorry but I can't be that gullible. I just can't. I want to be. Don't get me wrong. I really don't want to believe that the Clinton Administration chose to lie to the American public and cover up a terrorist attack on an airline -- information that could have prevented 9/11. Or there is the other theory, that perhaps the plane was brought down by our own military in a top secret accident. I don't want to believe either scenario, but the eyewitness accounts of a rocket trail, the early reports of explosive residue on the plane, not to mention subsequent history -- dammit I just can't do it! I am with the conspiracy nuts on this one, folks.