Michael,

Please post a URL linking to the article instead of copying it (but only
the text verbatim?  I appreciate that you at least included the byline,
but there are URLs embedded in the article which are missing from your
copy.

Cheers
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Baier
> Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 9:51 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: OT: doing it right
> 
> They did that right and the right way.
> 
> U.S. focused on Iran after TWA 800 explosion      By Jim PolkCNN
> 
> Thursday, July 13, 2006; Posted: 12:08 p.m. EDT (16:08 GMT) 
> 
> WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House, suspecting terrorism, 
> readied plans 
> for retaliation in the Middle East when TWA Flight 800 
> exploded over the 
> ocean in 1996 after takeoff from New York, killing all 230 
> people on board. 
> 
> "I think our first thought when we got the news was that it 
> was terrorism," 
> President Clinton's national security adviser, Anthony Lake, 
> told "CNN 
> Presents" as part of an investigative documentary airing Saturday and 
> Sunday.
> 
> "We especially wanted to look for an Iranian connection."
> 
> In fact, terrorism was ultimately found not to be the cause, 
> but twice 
> before Boeing 747s had been bombed out of the sky -- Pan Am 
> Flight 103 over 
> Scotland in 1988, with 270 dead; and an Air India flight off 
> Ireland in 
> 1985, with 329 killed.
> 
> Within hours of the TWA explosion, security officials were 
> meeting at the 
> White House to discuss possible bombing raids as retaliation, 
> once they 
> knew who might be responsible. 
> 
> "The administration has done initial planning for response to various 
> suspects if they're implicated in this," a White House 
> official told CNN 
> several days later.
> 
> Iran was the leading suspect because the intelligence 
> community believed it 
> was behind the deaths of 19 American military service members 
> in a bomb 
> attack on the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi 
> Arabia only 
> three weeks earlier. Ultimately, the U.S. government said the Iranian-
> backed Hezbollah was responsible for that attack.
> 
> Also, a U.S. guided missile cruiser had shot down an Iranian 
> jetliner, by 
> accident, over the Persian Gulf in the summer of 1988, 
> killing 290 people.
> 
> James Kallstrom, the leading FBI investigator on the TWA 800 
> case, told 
> CNN, "If this was an act of terrorism, it had an awful lot of 
> consequences."
> 
> But as weeks began to pass and no evidence surfaced, top 
> officials began to 
> question the terrorism theory.
> 
> "We were not getting information to that effect," then-Chief 
> of Staff Leon 
> Panetta said. "No one was taking credit for it." (Watch 
> officials discuss 
> the terror climate after TWA 800 -- :38)
> 
> Eventually, the FBI found no evidence of terrorism and the National 
> Transportation Safety Board concluded TWA 800 was the victim 
> of a center 
> fuel tank explosion, most likely caused by a spark in its 
> vapor-filled 
> center tank directly below the passenger compartment.
> 
> The White House did take some steps, however, against 
> terrorism after the 
> TWA catastrophe.
> 
> President Clinton, meeting with victims' families a week 
> after the crash, 
> launched a safety commission headed by Vice President Al Gore.
> 
> Among its recommendations: improve screening at airports, require 
> identification for all passengers and match bags to those on 
> board. All 
> would eventually be adopted.
> 
> But one recommendation went largely unnoticed and unheeded.
> 
> "The FBI and CIA should develop a system that would allow important 
> intelligence information on known or suspected terrorists to 
> be used in 
> passenger profiling," the commission concluded.
> 
> The CIA and FBI, which often failed to share information with 
> each other, 
> subsequently did little or nothing to help the Federal Aviation 
> Administration create an airport watch list for terrorists.
> 
> After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World 
> Trade Center 
> and Pentagon, the 9/11 Commission referred to that ignored Gore 
> recommendation in its own report when it wrote: "As of 9/11, 
> the FAA's 'no-
> fly' list contained the names of just 12 terrorist suspects."
> 
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