U.S. Role in ’85 Air Crash Inquiry Faulted : Aviation: Congressional report finds officials failed to actively investigate the accident that killed 248 soldiers. It says the cause may never be known.

An internal congressional report criticizes the U.S. government’s failure to play an active role in investigating the 1985 crash of a chartered plane in Canada that killed 248 American soldiers returning from the Middle East.

The report sheds no new light on the cause of the crash. Indeed, it says that so much time has elapsed that it is unlikely the cause of the worst air disaster in U.S. military history will ever be known.

The Canadian Aviation Safety Board blamed the crash on ice on the plane’s wings. But its findings are disputed by four of the board’s nine members and other experts who have said that the crash was the result of an on-board explosion, possibly from a terrorist bomb.

The congressional report says that no U.S. official had enough detailed information to assess whether terrorism was involved because American officials relied too heavily on the Canadians. There was a “near total absence” of U.S. government participation in the investigation, according to the report, a copy of which was made available to The Times.

Both the report’s criticism of the U.S. government and its suggestion that the cause of the disaster will remain a mystery are likely to add to the controversy surrounding the crash of the chartered aircraft on Dec. 12, 1985, as it was leaving Gander, Newfoundland.

The House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime has scheduled a Dec. 4 hearing on the U.S. response to the incident. Letters were sent Friday requesting testimony from representatives of the National Transportation Safety Board, the State Department, the FBI and the Army. Two representatives of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board and the family of one victim also have been invited to testify.

The inquiry by the subcommittee is the first official attempt by a U.S. body to evaluate the events surrounding the crash.

The subcommittee staff spent about a year interviewing witnesses and reviewing thousands of pages of documents. The staff prepared a 24-page report for members of the subcommittee, but a staff member said that it does not plan to release the findings.

The crash also was the worst air disaster in Canadian history, and the Canadians quickly asserted jurisdiction. The congressional report said that the NTSB and other U.S. agencies allowed political and turf issues to keep them from becoming as involved as they should have been in the inquiry.

The report contends that jurisdictional differences should have been set aside to allow the appropriate U.S. agencies to play a role in the inquiry.

An NTSB spokesman said that he had not seen the report and could not comment on it. But he noted that international regulations grant jurisdiction over a crash to the country where it occurs.

The flight, operated by Miami-based Arrow Air, was on its way to Ft. Campbell, Ky., from Cairo, Egypt, via Cologne, West Germany. The plane was carrying members of the 101st Airborne, an elite Army unit that had been on a six-month United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Desert.

After refueling at Gander, the plane crashed while taking off and burned for 23 hours. All 248 soldiers and eight crew members on board were killed.

The Canadian board’s majority report said that the most probable cause was ice on the wings. It said that the evidence did not support testimony by witnesses who said they saw flames before the crash.

Four board members issued an unusual dissent in which they said that ice was not a factor and that a fire broke out on the plane while it was in flight. Private investigators hired by the families of the victims and other experts have speculated that a terrorist bomb caused the fire.