U.S. Probing for Sabotage in Fiery Explosion of Jumbo Jet

Federal authorities, including agents from the FBI and the CIA, mounted an intense investigation Thursday into whether a bomb blew apart a TWA jumbo jet that plunged into the sea off Long Island after erupting into an unearthly ball of flames.

All 230 people aboard the Paris-bound flight were killed in the crash, which occurred at 8:48 p.m. EDT Wednesday. Pieces of the plane fell into 120 feet of water 9 miles off Moriches Inlet.

President Clinton urged Americans not to assume that the horrifying fate of Flight 800 was the work of terrorists. But Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said that “early signs clearly point to a possibility of terrorism.”

Speculation about the cause of the crash ranged from a bomb to a missile to an engine explosion as searchers brought more than 100 bodies to shore, many of them badly burned. None of the victims wore life jackets, the crews said, indicating that disaster came suddenly, without warning.

At John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, where the plane took off, and at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, where it was bound, the families of the dead were taken into private areas and comforted by officials of government, the airline and professional counselors.

In Atlanta, organizers at the Olympic Games, which begin today, said they would tighten security. Airport systems already in use there include three-dimensional imaging, similar to CAT scans, and magnetic resonance technology, to detect a magnetic signature given off by explosives.

On Long Island, where crews were bringing pieces of the plane ashore, Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference that the crash site was a possible crime scene but that there was no clear evidence that the explosion was an act of terrorism.

Unless investigators find such evidence, he said, federal aviation experts will spearhead the probe, with assistance from federal law enforcement officials.

“The issue of accident versus criminal act is an obvious one that is out there for the moment,” Francis said. “We have no evidence at this point that this was not an accident. So the NTSB, as long as this is considered an accident, will be in charge.

“But should this turn out to be a criminal act, we would then have within the federal agencies a situation where the FBI, which is now assisting us, [would] take charge of the investigation, and we would become technical and special assistants for them.”

CIA Launches Probe

In Washington, government sources said the CIA’s counter-terrorism center was working on the investigation--even in advance of any determination that the crash was linked to international terrorism.

Francis said Flight 800 carried a diplomatic pouch containing State Department documents. He said the plane also carried packages containing small quantities of HIV-infected blood to be used by French researchers.

The blood was probably of no danger to searchers, health officials said, because it was likely that the vials were destroyed in the explosion.

Francis said the plane’s flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders have not yet been found. But he said investigators had located “everything from a very large piece of a wing to seats to panels to lots of insulation.

“But,” he added, “we don’t know whether there was an explosion or not. And I don’t think it’s helpful to speculate at this point. The investigation is ongoing and a decision will be made as more information becomes available. It’s just too soon to make a determination.”

Trans World Airlines officials said the company received no threats before the plane took off and that no one contacted the airline Thursday to claim responsibility for the crash.

“We have no reason to believe there was a threat against the aircraft,” said Mark Abels, vice president of communications for the airline.

Abels said the plane was a 747-131 aircraft that was first acquired by TWA from Boeing Co. in 1971. It made its first revenue flight in November 1971. On Wednesday night, after takeoff, it was carrying 250,000 pounds of fuel.

No Warning

He gave this chronology of the flight:

* The plane rolled away from the gate at 8:02 p.m. EDT.

* It lifted off the runway at 8:19 p.m.

* It disappeared from radar screens at 8:48 p.m.

“It is our understanding from various traffic-control centers that were in radio contact with the flight that there were no non-routine transmissions from the flight whatsoever and no indication of any problems until the flight disappeared and went silent,” Abels said.

“We have checked through the maintenance records of this particular aircraft, which of course are being forwarded to the various investigative authorities, and there was nothing about the operation of this aircraft from a maintenance standpoint that was not within engine and airframe manufacturers specifications and procedures.

“I’m not going to speculate at this point obviously about any kind of causality,” he said. “But we have at this point no reason to believe there was any operational problems with the aircraft.”

Abels said the plane was on the ground at JFK Airport for three hours after arriving from Athens. Two problems caused a one-hour delay at the gate before the flight, which had been scheduled to depart at 7 p.m., finally took off.

He said the first delay was caused by a “bag pull.”

“We had a bag checked onto the aircraft, and the passenger who checked the bag did not board the aircraft,” Abels said. “When that happens, you pull the bag. As we were in the process of pulling the bag, the passenger showed up and boarded the aircraft. And so the passenger and bag went on--and that delayed the flight approximately a half-hour.”

The second delay, he said, was caused by a “breakdown in a piece of ground equipment.”

He described the problem as an engine failure on a belt loader used to lift cargo into the plane. “It had to be towed away,” he said, “and that too caused a half-hour delay.”

He said the 230 people aboard included 212 passengers, 14 flight attendants and four cockpit crew members.

The Crew

The flight had two captains. Abels identified them as:

* Capt. Steve Snyder of Stratford, Conn. He had a total of 17,263 flight hours with TWA and had 2,821 flight hours as a captain. He was hired by TWA in 1964.

* Capt. Ralph Kevorkian of Garden Grove, Calif., who was serving as co-pilot. He had 18,791 flight hours with TWA and 5,471 flight hours on an 747 aircraft. He became a TWA pilot in 1965.

Abels said the other two members of the cockpit crew were:

* Flight Engineer Richard Campbell of Ridgefield, Conn. He had 18,527 hours with TWA, 3,873 on a 747 and 2,398 as a 747 flight engineer. He was hired by TWA in 1966.

* Flight Engineer Oliver Krick of St. Louis. He was hired by TWA on March 14 of this year and finished his training on May 15. Abels said Krick was “riding as an observer as part of his flight engineer training.”

Among the passengers was an additional TWA crew consisting of three pilots and 14 flight attendants. This crew was traveling to Europe “to pick up a plane and make a flight back to the United States,” Abels said.

Charles Wetli, Suffolk County chief medical examiner, said the bodies of nearly half the occupants of the aircraft had been recovered by late Thursday afternoon. He added that 20 bodies had been examined and there was little indication that a bomb tore through the plane.

“For the most part the bodies seemed to be intact. We found wallets and jewelry intact,” he said. “So we don’t have a situation such as ValuJet,” meaning that the remains in this case were not atomized as they were in the May 11 ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades.

The TWA plane went from 200 mph to a full stop within a half-second, Wetli said, which caused deaths by blunt trauma.

Arriving on a charter jet from London, TWA President and CEO Jeff Erickson landed in New York on Thursday and made a very brief statement at JFK Airport.

“The people of TWA share in the grief of the families of the passengers,” he said. “We too lost colleagues and friends. This is a personal tragedy for all of us. I do want to extend our many thanks to all of the New Yorkers who have come to the aid of our victims and our families.

“Our task now is to honor the memory of our lost colleagues by caring for the families and for each other. We intend to carry on in the best tradition of TWA and rededicate ourselves to the highest standards of safety and service as we have always done.”

Theories Abound

Speculation swirled about the cause of the explosion.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns was asked about television reports that a leading theory of department experts was that the plane was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile. Burns said he had no response.

When asked about the possibility, Pentagon officials urged caution. The plane had climbed to about 8,000 feet when it blew up, the NTSB said, and so was technically within range of the best shoulder-fired missiles. But the Pentagon officials said such a missile almost certainly could not have been launched from land.

The plane was about 9 miles from shore, the officials noted, and such missiles have a range of only 10,000 feet if they are fired straight up and 18,000 feet if they are fired parallel to the ground.

Military officers also cast doubt on TV suggestions that any extra “blips” that appeared on FAA radar screens might have been a missile fired from the ground. FAA radar, the officers said, probably is not sensitive enough to pick up objects as small as missiles.

Moreover, Francis, the NTSB vice chairman, said a review of FAA radar tapes showed nothing unusual so far.

Threats and Warnings

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said there had been “a variety of calls” claiming responsibility for the crash, but “I am not aware of any call that constitutes a credible claim.”

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said she was aware of two of those calls. She said both came after the disaster was reported publicly, making them suspect.

CBS affiliate WTSP-TV in Tampa, Fla., said it received one of calls.

Mike Cavender, vice president of news, said it was from a man and that it came at 2:45 a.m. EDT, about six hours after the explosion and long after news of the crash had been broadcast across the nation.

Tampa is the home of the University of South Florida, where Ramadan Abdullah Shallah taught Middle East history and politics as an adjunct professor for two years before he turned up in Syria last October as the leader of the radical Islamic Jihad.

The organization, backed by Iran, has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that have killed Israeli soldiers, civilians and an American college student. Shallah vowed a “hard war” against Israel. He blamed Israel for killing Fathi Shiqaqi, founder of Islamic Jihad, last Oct. 26 in Malta.

Shallah, reportedly carrying an Egyptian passport, came to Tampa in 1991, the year after several Palestinian scholars founded a institute there called the World and Islam Studies Enterprise. One of the founders was Khalil Shiqaqi, a brother of Fathi Shiqaqi and a visiting scholar at the University of South Florida.

In 1992, the university agreed to hold a conference with the institute and to exchange faculty members. Shallah signed for the institute.

Last year, the Tampa Tribune reported that the institute was connected to the Islamic Committee for Palestine, a Tampa group with links to Islamic Jihad. The institute denied the report, but the university suspended its agreement, citing procedural errors.

Asked about the Jihad incidents in Tampa, a Justice Department official said that tying them to the TWA crash seemed “thin.”

The official, who asked to remain anonymous, said the second telephone call that Reno mentioned came to a U.S. embassy in a Western European country. The caller similarly took responsibility for the crash, the official said. He declined to identify the group that the caller claimed to represent.

“There’s no reason,” the official said, “to accept it [the call] as authentic.”

Similarly, the State Department played down a threat from the Movement for Islamic Change, a group that claimed responsibility for a bombing last November at U.S. military headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which killed five Americans.

In this instance, Al-Hayat, a prominent Arabic newspaper based in London, said it received a faxed warning Wednesday that there would be an attack on an unspecified U.S. target.

“All will be surprised by the size of the attack, the place and the time,” the warning said. It added that the attack would come “tomorrow morning”--which is what it was in the Middle East when the TWA plane exploded.

Al-Hayat officials did not give the communique much credence.

Burns, the State Department spokesman, called it “a kind of political tract . . . that threatened U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi government. It had no specific threats in it whatsoever, certainly nothing specific pertaining to the crash.”

Times staff writers Alan C. Miller, John J. Goldman, Jane Hall, Eric Malnic and James Gerstenzang in New York; Ronald J. Ostrow, Art Pine and Robin Wright in Washington, and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

More Inside

* COVERAGE: Cable news-information network MSNBC faced its first test.

* SECURITY: The tragedy prompts new concerns over the level of airport screening. A14

* FAMILIES: There are few more delicate tasks than the notification of the next of kin. A17

* MORE COVERAGE, PHOTOS, GRAPHICS: A12-A17, A20

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Recovery Effort

The search for clues at the scene of airliner crashes is never simple, but “as underwater recoveries go, this one will be a little easier” because the water is only 120 feet deep, according to Ted Lopatkiewicz, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board. Multiple agencies are taking part in the recovery, including the NTSB, FBI, U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. The NTSB will take the lead role until a determination is made that a crime was committed, at which time the FBI takes over.

Planes, helicopters and boats are at the scene for the initial phase of the search Thursday. By daybreak today, the Navy will expand its search with sophisticated tracking equipment.

Conditions at the Scene

* Water temp: 68 degrees

* Today’s forecast: Intermittent showers and thunderstroms throughout the day, highs in the 80s.

* Water depth and bottom: 120 feet of water w/sandy bottom

* Wind: light from southwest

* Ocean currents: toward shore

****

Grid Search

The Coast Guard is searching waters off Long Island in a grid pattern. Efforts include:

* 400 U.S. Coast Guard personnel

* Nine Coast Guard cutters

* More than 100 small craft

* 4 helicopters

A: Denotes search sequence. 1 C-130 transport plane.

****

Aiding the Search

At daybreak today, the Navy expects to expand its search with equipment:

Black Boxes: The two so-called black boxes--which are really orange--contain the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. The former emits an electronic signal every second as soon as the recorder gets wet and continues for about 30 days.

Pinger Locater System: Towed behind a ship, the PLS listens for the black boxes’ signal, or “ping.” It establishes the direction the pings are coming from and points searchers toward their target.

Sonar: Side-scan sonar, also towed on the ocean surface, is used to map the ocean floor, giving investigators a picture of how the debri landed.

Camera: The MR2, a mini-remote operator vehicle, is used to obtain still and video pictures. It is towed alongside the other equipment.

Sources: U.S. Coast Guard 1st District Headquarters, Boston, Mass.; WeatherData; U.S. Navy, Associated Press

Researched by D’JAMILA SALEM-FITZGERALD and CARY SCHNEIDER / Los Angeles Times