First Strike Twa Flight 800 and the Attack on America

Chapter Two ;Lost Opportunities ;Had the year been 1997 or had anyone but Bill Clinton been president, it is likely that the American people would have known the truth about TWA 800 within twenty-four hours of the crash. But the year was 1996, a presidential election year. Bill Clinton was the incumbent running for a second term. And the White House, indeed the nation, was moved by his one, almost primal urge. ; ; "All that mattered was his survival," Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos writes of his former boss. "Everyone else had to fall in line: his staff, his cabinet, the country, even his wife." Stephanopoulos speaks here of another circumstance. In fact, in his memoirs, All Too Human, Stephanopoulos devotes not a word to TWA 800, an event too large to be slighted by chance, given his deep involvement. But to understand this event and all its ramifications, one must first accept the logic that guided the investigation, and that is, as Stephanopoulos suggests, the logic of survival. ; ; In another time, survival might have dictated a retaliatory response, the contingency plan now "dusted off." A president's star, after all, is rarely dimmed by decisive action. But as the president mulled his options during the early morning hours of July 18, he understood something few others ever would: The events off the coast of Long Island were not neat, not at all. They would take a good deal of explaining. And these explanations might very well expose his own Achilles' heel: his uncertain grip on the role of commander in chief. This was a chance he did not want to take. ; ; ; Only a John Le Carr would put the refined, ineffable Robert Francis in the living quarters of the White House with Clinton that anxious early morning of July 18. In real life, his presence there does not seem likely. And yet it seems altogether likely that the White House communicated with Francis almost immediately, made sure he was the NTSB representative on the scene, made sure perhaps that he got to East Moriches before anyone else. The White House would tell him no more than he had to know, but the marching orders he received, unlike Anthony Lake's, had no hint of fife and drum about them. While Lake was being led to believe that terrorist missiles had taken down Flight 800, Francis was being told something different, something less. ; ; There is only one message from the White House that makes sense of all the actions that follow, and it goes something like this: "Terrorists are ultimately responsible for the downing of TWA 800. We cannot respond for sure until we know exactly who they are. Until then, we cannot even let them or the American people know that we are aware it was a terrorist act. To accomplish this, we have to remove all talk of 'missiles' and all evidence of the same, at least for now." Francis was a good soldier. In the next months, the word missile would not freely pass his lips. ; ; The president's public message on July 18 reinforced his private one. "We do not know what caused this tragedy," he protested, perhaps too much. "I want to say that again: We do not know as of this moment what caused this tragedy." He then cautioned the American people against "jumping to any conclusions." ; ; The White House likely gave Francis one other assignment-to keep his eyes on the FBI, to shadow Kallstrom, and to report back. All that we have to confirm this order is Francis's behavior from the moment he arrived in Long Island, but there is almost no other way to explain it. ; ; The White House did not much trust the ineffectual Louis Freeh and had no reason to trust James Kallstrom either. At the same time, however, the White House had little to fear from the FBI. The agency had no expeCashill, Jack is the author of 'First Strike Twa Flight 800 and the Attack on America' with ISBN 9780785263548 and ISBN 0785263543.