Salinger Revives Missile Theory in Flight 800 Crash

Former ABC-TV correspondent Pierre Salinger renewed his claim Thursday that TWA Flight 800 was inadvertently shot down by a Navy missile, prompting vehement denials from the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board.

“We have now reached the point where we are totally sure what we are saying is true,” Salinger told a news conference in Paris, where he produced a set of radar images he said supported his allegation.

Federal investigators scoffed at the images, saying the tape only contains the signatures of the TWA jetliner and other planes.

“We have looked at all the radar data. There is no evidence on any of the radar data of a missile tracking toward TWA Flight 800,” said Jim Hall, chairman of the NTSB in comments seconded by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno in Washington.

” . . . The investigators of the NTSB and the FBI have spent months in a hangar in New York working 12-hour days to find the cause of the crash. I find it extremely offensive that anyone would accuse these dedicated people of covering up the cause of this tragedy,” Hall said.

“We have no physical evidence that a bomb or missile was involved in this tragedy,” he added.

“The American people should know that the ridiculous claims of Pierre Salinger and his so-called investigative team are based on erroneous chatter on the Internet,” said James K. Kallstrom, assistant director of the FBI. “ . . . This terrible, terrible tragedy was not caused by our military.

“It is just outrageous,” Kallstrom said.

Flight 800, a Boeing 747, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean soon after taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on July 17 on a flight to Paris. All 230 people aboard the plane were killed.

Salinger said the images he showed were taken from a Kennedy Airport air traffic control videotape, and he charged that the missile was launched during top-secret Navy exercises off Long Island. He said the missile was supposed to hit a Tomahawk cruise missile but targeted the TWA flight by mistake.

Paris March magazine, which devoted a nine-page spread to the allegations, acknowledged that independent French experts interviewed by the publication “remain skeptical.”

The specialists told Paris Match that the kinetic energy or continuous rod missile that Salinger contends brought down the plane is believed to fly too fast to be picked up by airport radar.

Investigators are examining three theories to explain the tragedy--that the jetliner was struck by a missile, or the crash was caused by a bomb or mechanical failure. In an effort to find the cause, large portions of the plane are being reassembled in a hangar on Long Island.

Dahlburg reported from Paris, Goldman from New York.