Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Nov. 15, 2001

Former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member Vernon Grose says he’s afraid the agency’s chairwoman, Marion Blakey, may have to "eat crow, and big time” in her statement that "at this stage, all indications are that this is an accident.”

"Now that should never have been said, especially by the NTSB,” the Reagan-era member told NewsMax. "She [had] no evidence. They [had] not been there yet. They [had not] looked at the wreckage. They don’t know anything. They haven’t even really heard the cockpit voice recorder.”

Grose was joined in his criticism by Reed Irvine, whose Accuracy In Media (AIM) conducted a thorough independent probe of the TWA 800 crash of July 1996. Irvine’s pursuit of the case strongly indicated a cover-up. Many witnesses reported seeing a missile hit the TWA plane off the coast of Long Island that night.

Neither Grose nor Irvine is alleging that the crash Monday in Queens, N.Y., was an act of terrorism. But they say all the facts are not in yet. And some hard questions need to be answered first.

"If the tail left the airplane before the engines did,” that is cause to ponder, said Grose, a 50-year veteran of such investigations.

"We [had not] had a record of a tail leaving an airplane,” he said. "We have had engines leave ... but we have not had entire tails leave an airplane. So if this tail leaves an airplane two minutes after it lifts off, there’s a reason for that. It could be just sloppy maintenance.”

But we don’t know because, as Grose added, "On the other hand, it could be a diabolical act of someone of ill will.”

Respected longtime federal investigator Mary Sciavo agrees. She told radio talk show host Sean Hannity on Wednesday that terrorism could not be ruled out "because of the rarity of an in-flight breakup.” The former inspector general for the Department of Transportation added that "if this is what they think happened [an accident], then this is catastrophic.”

Sabotage would be very difficult, Sciavo said, "because you would have a very hard time sabotaging this plane [to] do something to the tail and then do something to both engines.”

Either way there is a problem, in Sciavo’s view. Either we have the worst in-flight breakup in U.S. history, or we have "tampering,” which may or may not be related to the Sept. 11 terrorists.

But "until we know something about why the tail left the airplane and why and who had any influence on that tail on the night before ...it is absolutely inappropriate for anyone at the NTSB to say that this is an accident,” Grose told NewsMax.com.

Irvine says as far as we know now, the accident theory is "tenable,” but doors should not be slammed on other possibilities until the investigation is complete.

That’s what the FBI did with the TWA 800 case, he said. It discounted any evidence that pointed in any direction other than an engine problem. It tried to cover up anything that interfered with what it wanted to prove.

Irvine hopes agencies other than the FBI take the lead in the American Airlines crash probe, he told NewsMax.

"They so messed up the TWA investigation, and they were very secretive about the evidence that they were bringing in – the forensic evidence, evidence they didn’t want any [other investigators] to see. They were caught pounding the metal [in the hangar] to alter it so it would fit their hypothesis, whatever it was. They were just very dishonest.” Grose emphasized that Chairwoman Blakey, a Bush appointee who is new on the job, was not motivated by any desire to cover up wrongdoing or incompetence.

She is making the same assurances as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Gov. George Pataki and others who "want to reaffirm to the public to keep flying. That is not [supposed to be] the motive of the NTSB. It is not a cheerleader for the economy. It’s not a cheerleader for the airline industry. It’s not a cheerleader for anybody.”

Rather, the safety board should be "a champion of objective analysis.”

"I have nothing against [Blakey],” former NTSB member Grose said, "and I’m sure she jumped into this rather innocently.”

Nothing "diabolical” here, "just a flat-out error,” opined Grose, a best-selling author of the book "Managing Risk.” He is in the business of "systematic managing of risk.”

Airport Security Bill

Meanwhile, leading Republicans on Capitol Hill have been telling the White House that President Bush is going to have to get more involved if he wants to see a good airport security bill passed.

One key House member told NewsMax.com that Bush is "going to have to come forward and push for the kind of airport security bill he wants.”

That, of course, would be the House version, which calls for more involvement with the private sector, as opposed to the Senate measure, which would completely federalize airport security.

House Republicans are grousing that they have done their part by passing the bill the president supported. Now, they think he needs to use the bully pulpit to push for it.

"He needs to tell Congress something besides just ‘Do your work,’” the lawmaker said.

Only the president can break the impasse between the House and Senate, he stressed.

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