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 that until the fuselage is retrieved, the government will not be able to determine whether the Paris-bound jet carrying 230 people was downed by a terrorist attack or by an accident,

“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” that was presumably wreckage. The sound-wave equipment signaled something about 15 feet high projecting up from the sandy Atlantic shelf, which is 120 feet below the surface of the crash site.

But there were also disappointments 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 determine why the Boeing 747 crashed in flames soon after climbing 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 that the aircraft had been cleared to climb to 15,000 feet and that the cockpit crew responded affirmatively to that notification.

“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. Later, some of the family members, grief-stricken and angry, expressed despair over the slow pace of the identification of bodies by the medical examiner.

* 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 chaperons--had come.

* A group of TWA employees, tired of listening to New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani criticize their 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.

The Investigation

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 may have been responsible--if the crash 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.

“There are a lot of people who have access to a plane like that, besides the passengers and flight crew--caterers, cargo handlers, cleaners, maintenance personnel. It would not be that hard to infiltrate there,” said a veteran TWA pilot.

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 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 point of impact. Objects on the ocean floor may be moved by currents, but not as quickly as those on the surface, 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 that 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 was 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 fleet’s mission is to scan the ocean bottom with sonar to search for wreckage and to run 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 vessels were limited in what they could accomplish together because some of the sonar interferes with the capacity of other devices to pick up the sounds that authorities hope the “black boxes” are emitting.

Sonar sends out sound signals and reads their reflection. Like radar, it provides a picture of the surfaces the signals are striking. It can create a fairly accurate rendering of the ocean floor and anything lying on it or on the shelf off Long Island; the ocean bottom in the vicinity of the crash site is smooth, flat and well-charted, making the mission easier.

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

Despite the extensive search conducted Saturday, Francis said the amount of wreckage recovered since the crash occurred Wednesday evening “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 that “his report is encouraging to us from an investigative standpoint.”

However, the FBI official said 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.

Nevertheless, he used the term “evidence” on several occasions, including when he discussed the findings of the medical examiner. This suggested with even greater clarity than in the past an official view that a crime had been committed.

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

“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, conducted at the NTSB’s base in Smithtown, N.Y., 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 the 63 autopsies conducted so far have yielded no evidence that a bomb tore the plane apart, but he added that 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 after New York Gov. George Pataki ordered state authorities to dispatch five additional pathologists.

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 brush for possible DNA matching--were sent to New York to help officials identify his body.

The Families

At midday Saturday, representatives of some of the victims’ 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 efforts and the investigation. The briefing was conducted at the Coast Guard station at East Moriches.

“They have not only suffered a loss, they are sitting in a hotel without answers,” Pataki said of the families.

On the helicopter flight, he said, was a resident of Montoursville, Pa., the small town from which the high school group had departed for a visit to France.

More family members waiting at the Ramada Inn were given their first full briefing on the investigation, including a report by Kallstrom and NTSB officials, late Saturday afternoon.

Kallstrom put his arm around some sobbing family members, said Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), who accompanied the FBI agent.

Dramatic and deeply moving stories of lost loved ones continued to emerge Saturday.

One came from Ron Dwyer of New River, Ariz., whose 11-year-old daughter, Larkyn, was aboard the flight.

Dwyer said he had served in the Coast Guard for seven years and had taken part in search-and-rescue operations. He said he understood the difficulty of the work but that he would not leave until he had obtained his daughter’s remains.

“She was a beautiful kid,” he said. “When I said goodbye to her, she hugged me and told me she loved me.”

Shelagh Winter of Grosse Pointe, Mich., told of French exchange student Celene Rio, 11, who boarded Flight 800 to return home.

Winter said Celene, daughter of Juan-Luis and Veronique Rio of Othia, France, had exchanged visits with her own daughter, Elizabeth, 12.

Winter said she came to JFK Airport after the crash to act as a “stand-in” for Celene’s parents, whom she described as “immobilized with grief.”

She said she will fly to France on Monday to help console the Rio family.

“I feel somehow responsible,” she said. “But her parents’ grief must be 10 times what I’m experiencing.”

Winter said her last words to Celene were: “I love you very much. You are like my other child.”

To that the child responded: “I love you too. I’ll beg my parents to let me come back at Christmas.”

Times staff writers Robin Wright in Washington, Marc Lacey and John J. Goldman in East Moriches, Mary Williams Walsh in Germany and James Gerstenzang in New York contributed to this story. Special correspondent Lisa Meyer in New York also contributed.

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FBI Seeking Information

The FBI has established a toll-free telephone number (1-888-245-4636) as well as an e-mail address (newyork@fbi.gov) for anyone to use to offer information about the crash.