Crews Scour Ocean Floor for Crash Evidence

Operating in still-choppy seas, Coast Guard and Navy vessels searched a 500-square-mile grid of the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island on Saturday, homing in on a large, sunken object as they tried to find the fuselage of the jumbo jet that crashed four days ago.

While authorities appeared to all but embrace the theory that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a bomb, a senior FBI official said the government will not be able to determine whether the Paris-bound jet, with 230 people aboard, was downed by a terrorist attack or by an accident until the fuselage is retrieved.

“We want the fuselage. We want the rest of the airplane. But most importantly, we want the bodies. I suspect they are all together,” James Kallstrom, an assistant FBI director, said Saturday evening at a news conference.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation, Vice Chairman Robert Francis, said sonar had located “a trail of material on the [ocean] bottom,” which he said was presumably wreckage.” The sound-wave equipment signaled something about 15 feet high projecting upward from the sandy Atlantic shelf, which is 120 feet below the surface at the crash site.

But there were disappointments, as well on Saturday, as an array of more than 400 Coast Guard personnel, and many others from the FBI, the Navy and local police agencies worked to find material--and victims--that will help them determine why the plane crashed in flames as it climbed through 13,700 feet toward its transatlantic route.

Francis said that as of Saturday night, no sign had been found of the flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders, the so-called black boxes that record crucial information about the flight and what is said in the cockpit. The units are configured to send off pinging noises when they hit water in order to help searchers locate them.

Nor did the final communication between the pilot and air-traffic controllers shed any light on what happened. Francis said a review of that communication found the aircraft had been cleared to climb to 15,000 feet and that the cockpit crew responded affirmatively to that information.

“But we have nothing past that,” he said.

There were these other developments on Saturday:

* Charles Wetli, the Suffolk County, N.Y., medical examiner, said some of the victims may have been alive as the plane plunged to the ocean but that the aircraft fell so rapidly that they most likely were unconscious. He said autopsies conducted on 63 of the 100 bodies recovered--none of them after Thursday--showed no evidence that a bomb was the cause of the crash.

* Representatives of the victims’ families flew over the crash site, then spoke with Kallstrom. Some family members broke down in sobs and the FBI official sought to comfort them. Kallstrom himself choked up later when he said he had lost a friend of 25 years who was a member of the flight crew.

* Plans were made for the family groups, who have gathered at a Ramada Inn in an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of John F. Kennedy International Airport, to conduct a private prayer service today. Another prayer service was planned today in the small Pennsylvania town from which 21 of the crash victims--16 high school students and their adult chaperons--had come.

* A group of Trans World Airlines employees, saying they were tired of listening to politicians criticize the company’s handling of the disaster, spoke out at a news conference at JFK Airport Saturday afternoon.

“Now is not the time to make this tragedy a personal agenda or political career,” said Sherry Cooper, president of the TWA flight attendants union, who was flanked by about 100 co-workers. “It serves absolutely no useful purpose. It does more harm than good.”

Cooper’s remarks primarily were directed at New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has complained that TWA officials took far too long to put together an accurate passenger list and notify family members. Later Saturday, Giuliani said he had never blamed rank-and-file employees, only management, and that the airline’s performance had improved.

“There was a serious lapse in the first 18 hours,” he said. “I think that TWA is doing a very good job now, but I think that the notification process has to be changed.”

Capt. Don Jacobs, chairman of the TWA branch of the Air Line Pilots Assn., reiterated the company’s position that delays occurred because officials wanted to make sure their information was accurate.

“It has to take some time to notify next of kin,” Jacobs said. “We know that many organizations, including the New York Police Department, also take time to notify the families where there is a crime or tragedy. They do it in a compassionate and caring manner. Sometimes compassion takes a little time.”

He also pointed out that many TWA employees were on the flight--as crew and as passengers.

“Our TWA family has suffered a great loss,” he said. “Fifty-four of our loved ones were taken.”

With authorities here and at sea working around the clock to unlock the mystery of the tragedy, other investigators from Washington to Athens were trying to figure out who was responsible--if the crash indeed turns out to be the result of a terrorist act.

“What we’re really worried about is whether this was a lone incident or whether there may be others. Anyone who really wants to hurt us and make a statement could try to hit three or four American carriers over the ocean,’ said a law enforcement official involved in the investigation.

The international airport at Athens, the ill-fated airplane’s last stop before it came to New York, has been the focus of security concerns in the past. Officials want to determine if an explosive device could have been placed aboard the aircraft there.

But a knowledgeable U.S. official said the FBI has been assured that everything that was loaded on the plane in Athens was unloaded at JFK Airport.

“Nothing that was put on board the plane in Greece was still on board when the plane took off again for Paris,” the source said.

Another possible hiding place for a bomb, however, could have been the mail pouches and private delivery pouches routinely carried by airliners. The pouches could be used to avoid devices used to scan hand-carried parcels and, in some cases, luggage carried in cargo holds.

An explosive smuggled onto the plane in a pouch probably would be set off by an altitude detonator, officials said.

Officials said the most telling early evidence of a bomb would be cargo hold “skin” fragments turned outward.

Wreckage Recovery

As the days since the crash go by, winds and currents are spreading whatever debris remains on the ocean surface farther from the crash site. However, objects on the ocean floor are unlikely to move a significant distance, investigators said.

On the shore, local police agencies and the New York National Guard used Humvees to search for anything that may have washed onto area beaches.

But the sea remained the real focus. The 500-square-mile area had been searched 10 times by midday Saturday.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jim McPherson said all the large pieces of floating debris had been recovered. But searchers continued to find smaller items.

“We’re finding things like seat cushions, insulation, tray tables,” he said.

The recovery effort in swells reaching 6 feet is being conducted primarily by six Coast Guard cutters; a privately owned New Jersey-based vessel, the Pirouette, which is under contract to the Navy, and two police boats. The police boats have the specific mission of scanning the ocean bottom with sonar and running microphones and other sophisticated devices through the water to listen for pings from the “black boxes.”

Francis discounted reports that recovery workers had heard the tracer sounds. “Not true,” he said.

He said the ships were limited in what they could accomplish together because some of the sonar interferes with the ability of of other devices to pick up the sounds that authorities hope the “black boxes” are emitting.

If the weather cooperates, the officials said they would use underwater video cameras and then, if necessary, divers. Officials said the relatively cold 61-degree water would slow degradation of materials that could help them determine the cause of the crash. But bodies deteriorate quickly, even in the cool water, making identifying the victims and determining causes of death more difficult.

Despite the extensive search conducted Saturday, Francis said the amount of wreckage recovered in the days since the crash occurred “was not very great.” Less than 1% of the huge airplane has been retrieved, he said.

Still, Kallstrom, referring to Francis’ report that sonar signals suggested a large object was resting on the ocean floor, said, “His report is encouraging to us from an investigatory standpoint.”

He added, however, that he was not ready to declare whether the crash was the result of an accident or a terrorist strike.

“When we reach critical mass on the evidence . . . we will then make such an announcement,” he said.

Kallstrom said the FBI had received “hundreds and hundreds” of calls on the toll-free phone line established to take reports on the crash, including those from Long Islanders who saw the flaming plane fall on Wednesday night.

“I’ve been impressed with some of the information we are getting from the citizens,” he said, praising them as “very observant.”

During the news conference, Kallstrom took pains to cast doubt on British press reports that a chemical residue indicative of a bomb had been found on the ocean floor.

“I caution you there has been a lot of bad press out there,” he said.

In another element of the investigation, Francis said an examination of TWA’s compliance with maintenance directives from the Federal Aviation Administration appeared to be in order.

“All airworthiness directives on the aircraft had been complied with,” he said.

The Victims

Wetli, the Suffolk County medical examiner, said Saturday that after conducting 63 autopsies, he still has found no evidence that a bomb tore the airplane apart.

But he said some “forensic materials” have been turned over to the FBI for further examination.

In his third day of examining bodies and body parts taken from the wreckage, Wetli said: “I have seen no evidence so far of any blast injuries.”

Of the 100 bodies his office had received, 11 have been positively identified. Another 17 have been tentatively identified. Two bodies have been turned over to families and another three are being prepared for release.

Wetli’s office began operating on a 24-hour basis Saturday on orders from New York Gov. George Pataki, who ordered state authorities to dispatch five additional pathologists to keep the procedures going around the clock.

Wetli said fingerprint records, dental charts, photographs and other identifying materials have been slow in reaching his office. “The holdup was that we were not getting the comparative information we needed,” he said.

In Studio City, Calif., Shimon Rojany, whose son, Yon, was aboard the flight, said X-rays, other medical charts and dental records--even hair from his son’s hairbrush for possible DNA matching--were sent to New York to help officials identify his body.

At midday Saturday, representatives of six families and officials from the consulates of Italy and France, two nations that had citizens aboard the plane, were flown by helicopter to view the crash site. After the flight, they were given a private briefing on the recovery effort and the investigation. That briefing was conducted at the Coast Guard station at East Moriches.