Crews Explore Dense Pile of TWA Wreckage

Navy and civilian recovery crews began to explore a sizable pile of submerged wreckage Wednesday from Trans World Airlines Flight 800, hoping for a breakthrough in determining the cause of the crash.

The developments came as families of the 230 persons killed in the July 17 tragedy vented their anger over their treatment by federal officials and airline representatives, prompting a scramble among political leaders to respond to their demands.

President Clinton announced plans to meet with families of the victims in New York this morning, although the White House said that the time and place still had not been worked out. Clinton will receive a briefing from federal officials before the session starts.

White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta also pledged that federal officials will brief families of the crash victims on new developments before the information is passed on to the press--a practice that began with Wednesday night’s briefings.

And, he said, beginning immediately the National Transportation Safety Board, which is overseeing the investigation into the crash, will serve as the sole source of information on the progress of the inquiry--with state and local officials deferring to the agency.

At the same time, members of Congress vowed to introduce legislation requiring the airlines and federal agencies to be more responsive to families--including one bill mandating that the carriers make passenger lists available within one hour after any crash.

The flurry of activity came on a day when crews recovered just three bodies--far fewer than predicted by New York Gov. George Pataki, who had claimed earlier that workers were about to bring in as many as 100 victims. Divers sighted seven more bodies late in the day.

Nevertheless, Robert T. Francis, vice chairman of the NTSB, was upbeat about prospects for recovering significant amounts of wreckage over the next several days--a development that analysts said may begin turning up more leads to the cause of the explosion and crash.

“I think we’re enormously closer,” Francis told a press conference. “We’ve located it. We’ve got ships capable of pulling it up. We’ve recovered approximately half of the victims. We’ve got big areas of wreckage out there. I think it’s a wonder what we’ve done in a week.

“We are delighted with what we’ve got right now,” he added.

Francis said that, as of late Wednesday, authorities had recovered the bodies of 113 of the 230 persons who are believed to have died in the crash, made positive identifications on 95 of them and tentative identifications on 12 and notified the families of 94.

He also disclosed that the Navy is bringing in a new, experimental “laser-line scanner” that has proven capable of identifying human bodies under water. The equipment, which uses a pair of laser beams and prisms to locate remains, will arrive in one or two days.

There were these other developments:

* Assistant FBI Director James K. Kallstrom declined to comment on reports that authorities have found fragments of metal in some of the bodies that have been recovered. Such an outcome is to be expected after an explosion, he said. The important issue is the cause of the blast.

* Chief NTSB investigator Al Dickinson told reporters that authorities had “no evidence” so far that Flight 800 had leveled off at 9,000 feet after plunging from an altitude of 13,700 feet--a theory propounded by those who suspect that a missile may have brought the plane down.

Francis said that three major salvage vessels in the crash area have spent most of the day positioning themselves for the recovery process and anchoring so that they can move with precision to haul up parts of the aircraft.

“Certain amounts of wreckage have been coming up to the surface in what I would call the prime area for potentially finding both victims and wreckage,” Francis told reporters at a briefing.

The commanders of the three salvage vessels positioned their ships in a triangle over a 3,000- by 1,000-meter area under which large parts of the wreckage have been located.

Francis said that the civilian salvage tug Pirouette had anchored at one point of the triangle, the Navy salvage ship Grasp at another and the Rude, a recovery ship belonging to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, at a third.

He said that the Grasp was held fast by three carefully spaced anchors, enabling it to move with precision to any spot in the area simply by taking in or paying out anchor chain.

Francis said that Grasp was positioned over the densest and “potentially the most productive” portion of the wreckage and would be able “to move very precisely from point to point.”

The ship began lowering divers and underwater robots into the water Wednesday afternoon and Francis said that both the Pirouette and the Grasp would begin operating “on a 24-hour basis from now on.”

In addition, the Oak Hill, a Navy amphibious landing ship that is equipped with a dock in which pieces of wreckage can be kept and cut up for examiners, arrived off the Long Island coast and was standing by to help when segments of the aircraft are recovered.

The tensions between recovery officials and the families increased Wednesday, with some family members charging that they were being patronized and that politicians were trifling with their emotions by saying things that later prove untrue.

“We’re not children--we already have lost everything,” Joe Lychner of Houston told reporters after a stormy session with Pataki on Wednesday. “We call on the government to give us all the information,” he said, “and to do it now.”

Pataki seemed unfazed by criticism of his prediction Tuesday night that 100 bodies would be recovered Wednesday, saying that he had been given the information by divers “and believed it to be accurate. The important thing is to look forward,” he told reporters later.

At the White House, officials called in an array of Cabinet officers and agency heads to help deal with the families’ frustrations, leading to Clinton’s decision to travel to New York.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry told reporters it was “very understandable” that the families were frustrated by the recovery effort but he said the effort has been “very hard-going and I think everyone recognizes that.”

Malnic reported from East Moriches, N.Y., and Pine from Washington. Times staff writers Richard A. Serrano, Alan Miller, Marc Lacey and John Goldman, reporting from New York, contributed to this story.