FBI Sees No Link Between Atlanta Blast, TWA Crash

The top FBI official in the investigation of the crash of TWA Flight 800 said Saturday that he has so far discerned no link between the tragedy off the coast of Long Island and the bombing at an Olympic venue in Atlanta.

“My first blush is that I don’t see any connection,” said James K. Kallstrom, the assistant FBI director in charge of the bureau’s New York office.

Kallstrom said none of the agents investigating the July 17 crash that killed all 230 people aboard the Boeing 747 jumbo jet has been diverted to the federal probe of the attack on Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park.

“In fact, I brought some people from other places to here,” Kallstrom said. He identified the additional personnel as helicopter pilots who will help move equipment and recovery workers around the crash site.

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Kallstrom and Robert Francis, who is heading up the National Transportation Safety Board’s probe of the New York crash, said it is unlikely that all of the victims will be found.

Francis said divers still hope to locate and recover all the bodies, “but in circumstances of this kind, recovery of 100% of the bodies is not usual.”

Although investigators have been focusing on the possibility that Flight 800 was brought down by a bomb, both Kallstrom and Francis continued to emphasize that they still lack the evidence needed to determine the cause of the crash.

Efforts to locate and recover bodies and wreckage from the undersea crash site continued Saturday, using divers guided by sophisticated laser-scanning equipment, sonar probes and video cameras.

Seas were rough Saturday, and Francis said that if conditions worsened, the search might have to be halted for the night. So far, 145 bodies have been recovered; 139 of them have been positively identified.

For the first time, Kallstrom said, recovery workers will not only be looking for bodies, but will begin pulling up wreckage even if there are no bodies nearby. Previously, officials said the crash wreckage would be retrieved only if it was necessary to reach the body of a victim.

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“We’re getting to the point where we’re going to start lifting stuff up to see if there are bodies underneath it,” he said.

Joseph Cantamessa Jr., a special agent in the New York FBI office, said pieces of material have been found embedded in some of the bodies. He declined to identify that material.

Cantamessa said most of the victims had broken bones. He added that investigators have still not found any chemical residue on any of the bodies.

Sources said the presence of foreign material in the bodies, and the broken bones, are not regarded as clear evidence that the plane was downed by a bomb.

Francis said portions of the plane’s landing gear, engines, wings, tail and fuselage have been recovered, including part of what could be the cockpit and nose of the plane.