WASHINGTON, DC - May 5, 1999 (INB) A superlative mystery: the biggest disaster in US aviation history produced the most expensive investigation ever, and after 3 years, the investigation itself is looking like a disaster too. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure U. S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Aviation will hold a hearing on the reauthorization of the National Transportation Safety Board On May 6, 1999, starting 9:30 AM, in room 2167 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Tom Stalcup has provided written testimony for the above hearing calling for Congress to establish a committee of independent experts to review the NTSB's ongoing and still inconclusive investigation of TWA Flight 800, which crashed off Long Island in July 1996.

Tom Stalcup is a researcher at the Magnetics Lab at Florida State University. He is representing the Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, an ad hoc group of over 35 citizens with diverse areas of technical expertise that formed more than a year ago in response to perceived problems in the official investigation. He will be at the hearing in person, but may not be allowed to answer any questions in this "public hearing."

He has provided the Subcommittee with a well-documented study that concludes:

• the NTSB conducted incomplete testing of crucial pieces of evidence, and are guilty of a high level of complacency about many contradictory results.
• the NTSB and the FBI failed to identify the nearest surface vessel to the tragedy.
• eyewitness reports have been inaccurately portrayed by NTSB and FBI officials in at least two animations depicting the official crash sequence.
• the cause of the crash of Flight 800 is still unresolved after 3 years and $40,000,000.
• it now appears that any objective and close scrutiny of the more accessible facts in this closely held investigation leads to only one solid conclusion: the most expensive inquiry ever, of the greatest disaster in US aviation history has produced an inexplicably flawed and inconclusive official investigation.

The testimony can be read at: http://magnet.fsu.edu/~stalcup/sub_rep3.htm http://magn et.fsu.edu/~stalcup/subb_comm3.htm

Distributed by Internet News Bureau http://www.newsbureau.com. Technical questions about the validity of the Flight 800 Investigation are reviewed at the The Science of the TWA 800 Investigation Web site.

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