I thought of Captain Spruck’s words again: This way is up. Right?
I stopped the tape, sat back in my recliner, and thought.
The CIA animation raised more questions than it answered, it flew in the face of logic, and it contradicted by cartoon what people swore they saw. Sometimes the least said and the least shown, the better. I might have bought the mechanical failure conclusion—eyewitnesses notwithstanding—if it weren’t for this gratuitous CIA creation.
I hit the Play button, and the tape continued.
Kate came into the living room, wearing a little teddy. “Come to bed, John.”
“I’m not tired.”
She pulled up a footstool, sat beside me, and took my hand. We watched the last few minutes of the tape together.
The conclusion of the pseudo-documentary was not entirely clear, ending with questions and leaving open the possibility of a sequel.
I shut off the VCR, and we sat in the dark, silent room, high above the streets of New York.
Kate asked me, “What do you think?”
“I think this tape is about forty percent inaccurate and forty percent manipulative. Like an Oliver Stone movie.”
She asked, “And the rest of it?”
“Just enough truth to make you wonder.” I asked, “What’s with the missing high-speed boat?”
She replied, “That’s real. A few unimpeachable radar sightings describe a boat moving at high speed—thirty knots—away from the crash site right after the explosion.” She added, “Most private boats in the area went toward the crash to see if they could help. The military boats remained on station until ordered to move toward the crash site. The Coast Guard and FBI put out a public call for all boat skippers who were in the area that night to come forward and report their positions and describe what they’d seen. Everyone did, except this one boat, which became known as the Thirty-Knot Boat.”
I said, “So that’s the boat from which the missile was supposed to be fired.”
“That’s the theory.”
I remarked, “Maybe the people on this boat were up to what the couple on the beach was up to and that’s why that boat hightailed it out of there. I’m sure there were a lot of men and women out there on that summer night who weren’t supposed to be there together.”
“So what you’re saying is that the only heat-seeking missile on this missing boat was between some guy’s legs.”
“Sounds like something I’d say.”
She smiled and said, “Actually, you’re not the first person to come up with that thought. What did you think of the CIA animation?”
“There seems to be a disconnect here.”
She nodded, then informed me, “You know, not all the eyewitnesses described the same thing. Some saw two streaks of light. Many saw the streak of light ascend higher than the aircraft, then come down in an arc before it hit the aircraft from overhead. Others say the streak rose directly up from the water and hit the underside of the aircraft. Most people describe two explosions—the initial smaller explosion, followed by the huge fireball. But some people describe three explosions. Some people say they saw the nose section fall off, but most didn’t. Some people say the aircraft seemed to stop in midair after the first explosion, some don’t. Some saw the burning aircraft rise after the explosion, which radar sightings confirm, but most people describe a straight plunge into the ocean while others describe a wing-over-wing descent. In other words, not all of the eyewitnesses agree on all of the details.”
I replied, “That’s why I don’t understand how the CIA could make a speculative animation based on so much conflicting testimony. You’d need at least a dozen different animations to account for all the different testimonies.”
Kate replied, “I think the CIA started with one premise—the official conclusion, which didn’t include a missile. Then they depicted that conclusion the way some aviation experts say it should or could have happened. The eyewitness descriptions were irrelevant to the CIA. They simply said, ‘This is what you saw.’”
“Right. Somebody in this tape said that the eyewitnesses were never called to testify at any of the official and public hearings. Is that true?”
“It is. I’ll tell you something else. The FBI did not do many follow-up interviews with the witnesses. Dozens of witnesses kept calling us asking to be interviewed again. A lot of eyewitnesses got frustrated and went public, but found that the news media weren’t interested after the government began saying it was a mechanical failure.” She added, “I’ve never, in all my years of law enforcement, seen so many credible witnesses given so little credence.”
I thought about this and reminded her, “The more witnesses you have, the more variations you have. Eventually, they cancel each other out. I’d rather have one, maybe two good eyewitnesses than two hundred.”
“I gave you one.”
“Right. But people see what they’re mentally conditioned to see. I’ll tell you what was happening in the summer of 1996. Three weeks before TWA 800, the U.S. military residence in Saudi Arabia, the Khobar Towers, had been bombed. The FBI was on high alert for the summer Olympics in Atlanta, and the news was full of potential attacks from Iran, and from a dozen different terrorist groups. So, when TWA 800 went down, what was the first thing you thought of? Probably the first thing I thought of—terrorist attack—and we didn’t even know each other.”
She replied, “What we thought is what over two hundred people say they actually saw. This was not a mass hallucination.”
“Right. But it could have been an optical illusion.”
“John, I interviewed a dozen eyewitnesses, and my colleagues interviewed another two hundred. The same optical illusion can’t be seen by that many people.”
I yawned and said, “Thank you for an interesting day. It’s late and I’m tired.”
She stood and ran her fingers through my hair. She said, “Keep me up a while longer.”
I found a sudden burst of energy and I launched myself out of the La-Z-Boy recliner, straight into the bedroom.
We got into bed and made love with a lot of frenzy, the way people do who are overwrought and trying to release the energy from a tough and frustrating day. This, at least, was something we had some control over, something we could make have a happy ending.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In the morning—I in my ratty bathrobe, and Kate still in her sexy teddy—sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading the papers. Bright sunlight came through the windows.
When Robin moved out, I canceled the Times and subscribed to the Post, which is all the news I need, but since Kate moved in, the Times is back.
I sipped my coffee and read a story in the Times about the memorial service we’d attended yesterday. The article began, “Five years after Trans World Airlines Flight 800 fell from the sky in fiery bits that landed in the ocean near here, the relatives of some of the 230 people who died in the crash made their annual pilgrimage to the East End of Long Island for prayer and remembrance.
“They came to be close to the last place where their friends and loved ones were alive. They came to hear the green waves heaving on the sand. They came to see the red and white Coast Guard house down the road in East Moriches where victims’ bodies were brought ashore.”
I continued to read the tortured purple prose: “The atmosphere of the first memorial here, days after the shocking crash and amid confusion over whether it had been caused by a malfunction or by a bomb, was one of numbing silence. . . . Many could only wade into the water to drop a flower, no more.”
Further down the article, I read, “They even have to deal with kooks, said Frank Lombardi, who assists the families. In recent days, he said, the families have been called by a man who said that he knows the identity of the terrorist who shot the plane down. ‘And if they give him $300,000, in cash, that he would tell them who it was,’ Mr. Lombardi said. ‘Is that sick or what? It is unbelievable that somebody would play on people’s emotions like that.’ (The Na
tional Transportation Safety Board concluded that an explosion in a fuel tank, possibly triggered by a short circuit, caused the crash.)”
I finished the article and gave the paper to Kate, who read it silently. She looked up and said, “Sometimes I think I’m one of the better-intentioned kooks.”
I asked her, “By the way, what was the name of the hotel where that couple may have stayed?”
She replied, “Everything you saw and heard yesterday was either public record, or, in the case of Captain Spruck’s testimony, available under the Freedom of Information Act. The name of that hotel does not officially exist.”
“But if it did, what would it be called?”
She replied, “It would be called the Bayview Hotel in Westhampton Beach.”
“And what did you discover at this hotel?”
“As I said, I never actually got to the hotel. This wasn’t my case.”
“Then how did you learn the name of the hotel?”
“I took it on myself to call local hotels and motels to inquire about a missing blanket. A lot of the people who I called said the FBI had already been there, showing them a blanket. One guy at the Bayview Hotel said he told the FBI that he was missing a blanket, and that the one they showed him could possibly be that blanket, but he couldn’t be sure.”
I nodded and asked, “And that’s the extent of the lead?”
“This guy at the Bayview did say that the FBI had gone through his guest registration cards, credit card slips, and his computer, and had questioned his employees.” She added, “He assured me that he wouldn’t mention any of this to a single soul, as instructed. Then he asked me if we’d found the guys who fired the missile.”
“Not yet. What was this guy’s name?”
“Leslie Rosenthal. Manager of the Bayview Hotel.”
“Why didn’t you follow up?”
“Well, when you get a bite, sometimes it bites back. Mr. Rosenthal, or maybe some other hotel person that I phoned, called their FBI contacts, or maybe the FBI was doing a follow-up or something, but whatever happened, the next day I get called into an office I’ve never been to on the twenty-eighth floor of 26 Fed. Two guys from the OPR who I’d never seen before or since told me I’d overstepped the scope of my duties on this case.”
I nodded. The OPR is the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility, which sounds really nice, but in fact, this is a pure Orwellian name. The OPR is like the NYPD Internal Affairs: snoops, snitches, and spies. I had no doubt, for instance, that Mr. Liam Griffith was an OPR guy. I said to Kate, “Did these guys offer you a transfer to North Dakota?”
“I’m sure that was a possibility. But they kept their cool and tried to make like it was a small error in judgment on my part. They even complimented me on my initiative.”
“You get a promotion?”
“I got a polite, but firm suggestion to be a team player. They told me that other agents were working on this lead, and that I should go on doing eyewitness interviews and confine myself to those duties.”
“You got off easy. One of my commanding officers once threw a paperweight at me.”
“We’re a bit more subtle. In any case, I got the message, and I also knew I’d hit on something.”
“So why didn’t you follow it up?”
“Because I was following orders not to. Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Ah, they were just testing you to see what you’re made of. They wanted you to tell them you weren’t going to drop it.”
“Yeah, right.” She thought a moment and said, “At that point, I just made the logical assumption that if anything came of this, it would come out in some internal memo followed by a news conference. I wasn’t thinking of conspiracy or cover-up five years ago.”
“But you are now.”
She didn’t reply to that, but said to me, “Everyone who was involved with this case was deeply affected by it, but I know that the witness interviewers were affected in a different way. We were the ones who spoke to people who saw this event, over two hundred of whom described what they believed was a missile or rocket, and none of us could reconcile what we’d heard from the witnesses with the Final Report or the CIA animation.” She added, “The ATTF bosses were having some problems with the interviewers, and I wasn’t the only one called into that office.”
“Interesting.” I asked, “How did the interviewing process work?”
Kate replied, “At first, it was just chaos. Hundreds of NYPD and FBI task force personnel were shipped out from Manhattan to the East End of Long Island within twenty-four hours. There weren’t enough places to stay, so some agents slept in their cars, the Coast Guard facilities were used as dorms, and some agents made it home at night if they lived close by. I slept in an office of the Moriches Coast Guard Station for two nights with four other women, then they got me a hotel room with another FBI agent.”
“Who?”
“Don’t ask me the names of the people I worked with.”
I actually didn’t want names of FBI people who wouldn’t talk to me anyway; but NYPD people would. I asked Kate, “Did you work directly with any NYPD?”
“A few, at first.” She continued, “There were over seven hundred good initial witnesses and about a hundred marginal types. And at first, we couldn’t determine which witnesses saw a streak of light and which saw only the explosion. Eventually, we classified the witnesses as to credibility and what aspect of the crash they saw. Within a few days, we had over two hundred witnesses who claimed they saw a streak of light.”
“And those were the witnesses that the FBI interviewed.”
“Right. But initially, in all the confusion, the NYPD got a lot of the good witnesses, and the FBI got a lot of bad witnesses.”
“What a horrible thought.”
She ignored this and continued, “We got it sorted out, and the witnesses who saw the streak of light were interviewed only by FBI. Then the cherry-picked witnesses—about twenty people who were very insistent about the streak of light rising from the ocean, such as Captain Spruck—were passed over to a higher echelon of FBI.”
“And CIA. Like Ted Nash.”
“Apparently.”
“Did any of these witnesses have unfortunate accidents?”
She smiled. “Not a single one.”
“Well, there goes my theory.”
I thought about this and realized what I’d known from recent experience and observation: The NYPD detectives working for the Anti-Terrorist Task Force were tasked with most of the initial legwork. Whenever they got a hit, they turned it over to an FBI agent. This pleased God.
I said to Kate, “I’ll bet that these interviewers—NYPD and FBI—who had the experience of talking to people who saw that streak of light are the core of the group who don’t believe this was an accident.”
“There is no group.” She got up and went into the bedroom to get dressed for work.
I finished my coffee and also went into the bedroom.
I strapped on my 9mm Glock, which I own, and which is a copy of my old police-issued piece. Kate strapped on her Glock, which is a .40 caliber FBI-issued model. Hers is bigger than mine, but I’m a very secure guy so it doesn’t bother me much.
We put on our jackets, she grabbed her briefcase, I grabbed the Post sports pages, and we left the apartment.
I had this mental image of six OPR guys at 26 Federal Plaza cracking their knuckles while they awaited our arrival.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Our doorman, Alfred, got us a taxi, and we began our half-hour trip downtown to our place of employment at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. It was 9 A.M., and rush hour traffic was starting to lighten up on this warm and sunny July day.
We’re not supposed to talk about anything sensitive in a taxi, especially if the driver’s name is Abdul, which was this guy’s name on his hack license, so, to pass the time, I asked Abdul, “How long have you been in this country?”
He glanced back at me, then replied, “Oh, about ten yea
rs, sir.”
“What do you think happened to TWA Flight 800?”
Kate said, “John.”
I ignored her and repeated the question.
Abdul replied hesitantly, “Oh, what a terrible tragedy was that.”
“Right. Do you think it was shot down by a missile?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“I think the Israelis shot it down and tried to make it look like it was the Arabs. What do you think?”
“Well, that is possible.”
“Same with the World Trade Center bombing.”
“It is possible.”
“John.”
“So,” I said to Abdul, “you think it was a missile.”
“Well . . . many people saw this missile.”
“And who would have such a powerful missile?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“The Israelis. That’s who.”
“Well, it is possible.”
“What’s it say in your Arabic newspaper on the front seat there?”
“Oh . . . yes, they mentioned this anniversary of the tragedy.”
“What are they saying? American military accident? Or the Jews?”
“They are unsure. They mourn the loss of life and look for answers.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
Kate said, “Okay, John.”
“I’m just trying to warm up a little.”
“Why don’t you try to shut up a little?”
We rode in silence toward 26 Fed, and I read the sports.
The Federal government, and all its employees, are very sensitive to the rights and feelings of all minorities, recent immigrants, Native Americans, puppy dogs, forests, and endangered species of slime mold. I, on the other hand, lack this sensitivity, and my level of progressive thinking is stuck somewhere around the time when police regulations were rewritten to prohibit beating confessions out of suspects.
In any case, Special Agent Mayfield and I, while not on the same wavelength, do communicate, and I had noticed in the last year that we were learning from each other. She was using the F-word more and calling more people assholes, while I was becoming more sensitive to the inner anguish of people who were fuckheads and assholes.