Jet’s Downing Sets Off Probe Around World

Even though authorities have yet to confirm that the downing of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 was an act of sabotage, U.S. agencies have launched what is likely to be one of the most extensive international investigations in U.S. history.

The FBI has conducted thousands of interviews, ranging from witnesses at the Long Island crash site who may have seen someone suspicious along the shoreline to those who came in contact with the plane to intelligence sources in the Middle East. And the records of everything carried onto the aircraft are being carefully examined--down to luggage and freight shipments.

At FBI headquarters in Washington, every victim’s name, every detail of every aircraft fragment retrieved, every piece of intelligence gathered by electronic eavesdroppers, as well as information from the last 65 attempted airline bombings and thousands of pieces of other information, are being fed into a central computer to coordinate data and make sure no possible lead is ignored.

CIA agents around the world are aggressively running operations to obtain information and get closer to people, groups or states capable of--or potentially interested in--plotting a terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft.

Nine days after the TWA jetliner exploded and plunged into the ocean off Long Island, federal investigators said Friday they still do not have proof it was destroyed deliberately, although circumstantial evidence strongly points in that direction. But this has not stopped them from moving aggressively to prepare for a far-reaching criminal inquiry.

“There is nothing I cannot have at my disposal,” said James K. Kallstrom, the assistant FBI director who is overseeing the agency’s inquiry here.

The primary phase of the investigation has focused on the retrieval of submerged parts of the Boeing 747 jetliner itself and the bodies of the victims, which could yield important clues as well if autopsies produce shrapnel or metallic fragments from an explosive device.

At the same time, authorities insisted that their first priority is recovering the bodies, in deference to the victims and their families--a painstaking process that has delayed salvaging more of the jet’s wreckage.

“There is evidence down there that will tell us what happened to this aircraft,” said Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

With less fanfare, law-enforcement agencies have poured enormous resources into other aspects of the inquiry.

“The logical thing to consider was that it could be a terrorist attack,” Kallstrom said. “Certainly, in the tenor of our times, the prudent thing for us to do was to start a baseline investigation. Because, if you don’t do that, you’re going to lose all that perishable information.”

Hundreds of FBI personnel from the New York field office and around the country converged on the south shore of Long Island to interview residents and anyone who may have witnessed the plane’s fiery descent shortly after takeoff on July 17, or any unusual activity preceding it.

Agents have scoured the nearby marshes and beaches for footprints or signs of anything that may have been dumped in a hurry. They have interviewed boat owners and sailors and others at marinas in the area. And they dusted for bomb residue any boats that were chartered or rented that night.

They apparently expect to stay in Long Island for some time: One local real estate agent reported receiving a call from the FBI asking for houses for rent.

The site of the flight’s departure, New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, is also receiving intense attention.

Investigators have debriefed scores of airline personnel who had something to do with the plane before its departure, including baggage handlers, mechanics and the crew who flew it on its previous leg from Hellenikon Airport in Athens to New York.

“I know all of the people who worked on that airplane have been interviewed,” said Don Jacobs, chairman of the TWA branch of the Air Line Pilots Assn.

He said investigators had asked crew members from a Lisbon-bound TWA flight that left Kennedy Airport about the same time as Flight 800 if they saw anything unusual.

Authorities also are gathering records of all cargo transported by Flight 800. Air cargo is generally not X-rayed or hand-searched.

The plane was carrying an estimated 3,000 pounds of mail and 6,000 pounds of cargo, which was not considered unusual, said TWA spokesman Kent Martin. He declined to describe the contents specifically because, he said, those records are part of the investigation.

Another focus is on the victims themselves. Investigators are assembling in-depth profiles of each passenger and crew member on the flight.

Every moment in the final days and hours of each victim’s life--all 230 passengers and crew--must be reconstructed. With whom did they meet or socialize? Who knew where their baggage was or had access to it--in a hotel room or half-packed at home? Who knew they were flying or where they were going?

These portraits are considered key to exploring a variety of possible motives if it turns out that a bomb destroyed the plane.

Within a day of the disaster, possible overseas leads were being sought. FBI officers stationed at U.S. embassies, particularly in the Middle East and the Far East, were asked to touch base with their foreign counterparts to look into recent threats or suspicious activities.

And agents in Athens were instructed to check the names on the aircraft’s passenger manifests as part of an investigation there that a senior government source said would be “very thorough.”

The inquiry begins in a far more difficult position than either of the two other U.S. worldwide manhunts--after the 1988 bombing of Pan American Airways Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. That is because it will be virtually impossible to find all the primary evidence in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, according to former FBI and CIA officials involved in the two previous investigations.

“TWA 800 is burdened by the fact that more than 100 feet of water will make retrieval more of a concern,” said Bill Baker, a former senior FBI official who oversaw the Pan Am 103 investigation. “Marine salvage will make the forensic trail much more challenging.”

Close cooperation between the FBI and the CIA is considered essential. The FBI will take the law enforcement lead because the explosion would involve a possible prosecution. It would continue to focus on acquiring criminal evidence that will stand up in court. It handles the forensics, overt legwork and public interviews.

Covert CIA operations would continue to function, looking in the field for suspicious actions, travel or acquisitions that might have links with Flight 800 and analyzing at headquarters the patterns of terrorism and sabotage that may match some aspect of this latest case.

Through it all, investigators will live by one rule of thumb, said Vince Canistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations who headed the agency’s task force on Pan Am 103: “The end conclusion is always different from the starting assumptions.”

Times staff writers Richard A. Serrano in East Moriches, Gebe Martinez in New York and Marc Lacey in Washington contributed to this story. Wright reported from Washington and Miller from New York.

* HIGH-TECH WITNESS: Weather radar picked up images from the rain of debris caused by the blast. A16