Original subtitles

- A Boeing 747-100 en route to Paris from JFK

went down off the southern shore of Long Island

about 50 miles east of Manhattan.

[ominous music]

- It was a horrific scene.

It touched the psyche of the American public.

- 212 passengers and a crew of 17 were reported on board.

It is believed none have survived.

♪ ♪

- This is the first time

that the FBI ever reconstructed a huge plane like this.

- It was unprecedented.

Recovered over 96% of this aircraft

over a series of a year and a half.

- Unless it's criminal in nature,

the FBI's not gonna be brought in.

But we don't know what happened, right?

- From 1982, there were approximately 1,000 people

that were killed in airplane incidents involving terrorism.

- We were feeling, "My God," you know,

"We have another terrorist act here."

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

♪ ♪

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze! - FBI.

- FBI! - Action!

- But they don't know the half of it.

[indistinct radio chatter]

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking agent to agent.

♪ ♪

This is "FBI True."

[soft tense music]

- Cindy Coppola is a 23-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked on cases that included

organized crime and terrorism

and took part in multinational investigations

into drug trafficking and money laundering.

Coppola finished her career with the Los Angeles division

running two offices, supervising investigations,

and providing undercover security for special events.

♪ ♪

- I know you guys worked the TWA Flight 800 case together.

♪ ♪

And when I first came into the Bureau,

that had just recently happened

about six or seven months prior.

And there were, you know,

a lot of people still working on that case.

- You have an airplane that fell into the ocean

on a beautifully clear night.

[helicopter whirring]

The top story that night on all the news channels.

- Witnesses say they heard at least one explosion,

maybe two, and then some witnesses say

they saw in the sky something that looked like a fireball.

The jet had come from Athens, Greece to JFK.

It was on the ground in New York

for about three hours before heading to Paris.

20 minutes later, it vanished from radar screens

and at this point, there is no word

if the pilots made a distress call.

- And having seen it on television,

I called down to the office to see, you know,

if they needed any help.

And the next day,

they asked me to come out and give a hand

out in East Moriches where we had set up

a forward command post for the recovery effort.

- For over 20 years, Kenneth Maxwell served

in a variety of positions in the Bureau.

A member of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force,

he led investigations into

major international terrorist attacks on U.S. citizens.

Maxwell managed the FBI's immediate response

to the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11.

- We immediately responded, as the Bureau always does,

in any type of major event,

especially one of this magnitude.

- Rescue workers worked through the night

recovering wreckage and human remains.

Now, the investigation this morning is being led

by a task force from the FBI and New York City police.

- There were 229 people on board the Paris-bound 747,

TWA Flight 800.

No survivors have been found.

[downbeat music]

♪ ♪

- It was a horrific scene.

It touched the psyche of the American public.

♪ ♪

- Neil Herman spent 25 years

working domestic and international terrorism cases

out of New York City.

He was a supervisor

on the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Herman is the recipient of the prestigious

FBI Director's Award for his counterterrorism work.

- Others might not know that unless it's criminal in nature,

the FBI's not gonna be brought in.

But we don't' know what happened, right?

- The fact remained we didn't know what caused this,

so we had to go into it with an open mind

and we ran an investigation

coupled with the National Transportation Safety Board.

- The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB,

is a U.S. government agency responsible for investigating

civil transportation accidents.

As the NTSB investigate

whether a mechanical failure was responsible,

the FBI explore a more frightening possibility:

sabotage.

- A number of former investigators have said

you have to put the possibility of a bomb

or sabotage at the very top of the list of possible suspects

because as one said to me, Russ, just a short time ago,

747s just don't blow up in the sky without some help.

This is an airplane that has a very good track record,

a very good safety record.

- You gotta remember that

everything that touched that plane once it landed

from Europe at JFK International

was in effect part of that investigation.

[suspenseful music]

We had massive investigations into the airport,

we had agents shuttling in and out over long periods of time.

♪ ♪

- These things time, but I'm very, very confident

that we will, as I said last night,

get to the bottom of this.

- Jim Kallstrom, rest his soul,

took the bull by the horns and he said,

"I'm in charge of this investigation.

We have to have command and control,"

and everybody said, "You're right, Jim,"

and it went from there.

♪ ♪

- Federal investigators say

at least 65 bodies have now been recovered.

- We were pretty certain early on

that it was of a catastrophic nature,

the breakup of this aircraft

and the altitude it came down from,

it was highly unlikely there were gonna be any survivors.

♪ ♪

But a human body still can be powerful evidence

as far as blast damage, as far as explosive residue.

All of that had to take place

in those immediate first few days.

The dive teams, FBI dive team,

Suffolk County, NYPD, Nassau PD,

whatever law enforcement agency had divers.

- They were out there. - They were out there.

Recovering victims of this awful event.

♪ ♪

- I remember you had people

still strapped into their seats.

- It was amazing that

some of the victims' bodies were fairly well intact

and very recognizable.

The divers recovered them on the ocean floor.

♪ ♪

And others, you know, through time and sea life

and all the other environmental factors,

the bodies were no longer intact

and we were recovering body parts.

Then add to that when the weather got too bad

for all of our dive teams,

we leased three or four scallop trawlers

with four agents on each scallop trawler.

That was 24/7.

And the agents' job was

when those nets landed on the deck of the trawler,

they would separate airplane parts

and human remains from sea life,

and the crew took care of the sea life

and the agents maintaining the chain of custody.

I remember Jim Kallstrom relating to me

that Charlie Christopher,

who worked for him in special operations,

his wife was one of the flight attendants

who perished that night.

And Charlie calling Jim and just saying, "Please, Jim,"

you know, "Do whatever you have to do

to find out what happened to my wife."

It was devastating to all of the families,

but it took on that personal touch, if you will,

that one of our own colleagues

lost his lovely wife that evening.

♪ ♪

- We do not yet know what caused Flight 800 to crash,

whether it was mechanical failure or sabotage.

But we will find out.

- You have to remember, for 3 1/2 years

that led up this tragic event,

we had been working on the World Trade Center bombing.

- The explosion ripped through

the World Trade Center's Twin Towers yesterday,

apparently from a car bomb in an underground garage.

Five people were killed, more than a thousand injured.

- We had this ongoing investigation involving

what was known as Manila Air, or the Bojinka plot.

- Two bombs were supposed to explode simultaneously

aboard two United Airlines 747s.

One would be arriving from Los Angeles,

the other from Singapore.

- We were feeling, "My God," you know,

"We have another terrorist act here."

♪ ♪

Did someone on board commit a suicide bombing?

OR was there a bomb like Pan Am 103

that was set into the cargo bay?

- 52 minutes after departing London's Heathrow Airport,

Pan Am Flight 103 crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland.

All aboard are dead.

- People from 21 countries filled these coffins.

189 of them were American.

- From 1982 until the event of TWA Flight 800,

there were approximately 1,000 people that were killed

in airplane incidents involving terrorism.

♪ ♪

The first weeks and months, we were doing all that we could

to eliminate certain potential criminal acts.

- Every single passenger had to be vetted out,

because you're looking at

any variety of different causes here.

The law is very strict with an aircraft accident.

There's only two agencies that are allowed access

to the manifest: NTSB and the FBI.

The manifest is so important in events like this

with aviation disasters.

There may be suspects on there--look at 9/11.

- Sure, yeah. - You know?

And the manifests were key

in very quickly identifying the hijackers.

So there's a real solid basis for getting that manifest

and vetting it out fully.

- You have agents and analysts running their history,

their background, where they coming from,

what were they doing, you know, all that stuff.

- Right.

- Agents cross-reference the names on the manifest

with police reports from the surrounding areas

and review potentially suspicious internet traffic,

telephone calls, and letters from the days

leading up to the tragedy,

but they soon conclude that

none of the victims played a role in the disaster.

- But then at the same token, you're doing recovery,

you're doing the evidence portion of it,

and from what I remember, this is the first time

that the FBI ever reconstructed a huge plane like this, right?

[tense music]

[slide projector clicks]

♪ ♪

- You can't get a conviction, necessarily,

in any criminal matter

just based upon eyewitness testimony,

so you have to look to the evidence.

What does the FBI do very well?

Collect evidence and forensically analyze it.

- To reconstruct the aircraft,

the investigators set themselves up

in a former Grumman aircraft facility

in Calverton, New York.

Maxwell leads the FBI's daily operations at the hangar.

- Now think about this for a second.

What do we have here?

- Water. - The ocean.

- Rescuers said their job was made harder by three things--

the darkness-- there was no moon--

a five mile-long oil slick left by the burning fuel

in the fully loaded aircraft,

and the water, 120 feet deep.

- It was unprecedented.

Recovered over 96% of this aircraft

over a series of a year and a half

and then taking all of that debris,

millions of pieces of debris,

some as large as an almost intact wing of a 747,

to small bits of metal and fabric and personal effects

that all had to be collected and analyzed forensically.

- So you guys are collecting all this evidence...

- Yeah.

- Trying to reconstruct the plane

and in your mind you're like, "How are we gonna do this?"

- Yeah.

- How do you know what piece goes where?

Does somebody say, "Hey, we're gonna need help

from so-and-so," and you make a phone call?

What happens?

- The way the NTSB works,

when there's an aircraft accident,

they bring in anyone who has any type of role

in that aircraft.

That means the aircraft manufacturer, Boeing,

that means the airline itself, TWA,

that means people who knew where things belong

in the aircraft.

Gridding it out with the shape a 747, right?

Fuselage, the wings. - Yeah, I remember.

- And then we have separate rooms

for different parts of the airplane that were coming in.

It was a Herculean effort.

And not only the fuselage of the 92-foot section,

which was awesome in and of itself

to be able to do that.

Thousands of man-hours put into that.

We had another hangar

that was dedicated to the reconstruction of the cabin.

You know, row-by-row and galley by galley

and lavatory by lavatory.

We were fortunate that because the seats,

the numbers and letters were on the arm rests of the seats,

it really facilitated

the reconstruction of the cabin area.

♪ ♪

- Can you tell me what it was like

when the families were allowed to come out

to see the reconstruction?

- So the families arrived to view this incredible effort

to put together the airplane

where their loved ones were lost.

- Almost seven months after the crash,

family members were taken by investigators

to the hangar where the bits and pieces of the plane

had been reassembled.

- It was exceedingly emotional to witness this.

- We went in to see the seat that Jamie was sitting in,

and looking at that,

I know it was the last place that he had been

and we were given white roses

and each one of us put a white rose in the seat.

- And we were very aware of how hard this would be

not only for the victims' families,

but the law enforcement personnel.

- When you look at the empty seats

that are charred and busted up and mangled,

you immediately run through your mind,

"These seats were full at one time and they were full of life

"and full of people and children

and husbands and wives," and it's just so upsetting

to see them sitting there like that.

♪ ♪

- As the FBI continues its investigation,

the results from forensic analysis

seemingly confirm their worst fears.

- As a result of scientific analysis

conducted by federal examiners,

microscopic explosive traces of unknown origin

have been found relating to TWA Flight 800.

- It was discovered at Washington in our lab

that there were five separate-- five separate confirmations

of high explosive residue found among that debris.

The attorney general and the FBI,

they were gonna declare this a criminal act

just based upon that.

And then at the 11th hour, it came to the Bureau's attention

that the same aircraft was out of St. Louis

a month prior in June

and St. Louis Airport police bomb dog and the handler

used that aircraft for... both: Training.

- That's done often.

The bomb dog handler actually

planted different kinds of explosives

in the cabin area and the galley

just to see if the dog would find it.

When that news came in, they said, "Time out."

You know? "What do we got here?"

And so what we were able to determine

from the thorough interview of that police officer

was that four of the five confirmations

could have come from that training

because they were very similar explosive chemicals

that he had secreted.

One, however, to this day, remains unexplained.

- Investigators examining the wreckage of TWA Flight 800

have found traces of a chemical often used in explosives.

- RDX, which is a high explosive chemical

usually found in military ordinance,

was recovered off the aft cargo bay curtain.

You couldn't say, "Oh, those explosive residues

definitely came from that dog training."

But standing alone wasn't enough

to declare that it was a crime because the bottom line was

forensically, you couldn't match the residue

with any type of physical damage

to the metal structure of the plane.

- When you're looking at potential terrorism avenue,

it's ruled out, then.

You rule out that it-- - Right. It gets ruled out.

- But there were certain questions

that couldn't be explained that were left in the gray area.

For instance, in the missile theory...

- Another major theory investigators are following

is that Flight 800 may have been brought down by a missile.

- There were very compelling eyewitnesses

giving us detailed accounts of seeing something

ascend into the sky

and then seeing an explosion after following this trail.

- And more than one witness.

- Hundreds of people. - Right. Yeah.

People seeing the same thing.

- Right. Hundreds of people.

So of course, that was the starting point.

It was plausible that a missile could have risen

from the surface and taken this plane out.

- We do have some information

that there was something in the sky.

A number of people have seen it.

A number of people have described it very similarly.

- And we seen this white light, looked almost like a flare

glowing in the sky.

- Scores of witnesses tell the same story.

- It was going on a downward trail,

but very, very, slow.

I mean, it was moving, like, that slow.

And then it just, boom, just exploded.

- What was it?

- That is one of the principle anomalies

in this whole investigation.

What was it?

- There were some eyewitness accounts

that make it sound as if

a missile could have been involved.

There is precious else to support that at this stage.

Nothing in the radar leads anybody to believe

that there was a missile involved.

- The CIA had a group of their experts and analysts

look at all of our eyewitness accounts

and apply science to it

in terms of where was this person standing,

the distance from the horizon, and they came to the conclusion

that what they really saw at that distance

was the illusion of something ascending.

They really saw debris descending and falling.

- Falling, descending.

- So that theory was put to bed.

[tense music]

- The investigation began and lasted, in effect,

for almost a year and a half.

- And that's when the FBI withdrew

from the investigation, turned it over to the NTSB,

and let them draw the final conclusion.

- Each Boeing 747 is equipped with seven fuel tanks,

one in the belly and three in each wing,

and connected to the tanks are 14 electrically powered pumps.

Some investigators suggest

an electrical spark coupled with a fuel leak,

may have caused TWA 800 to explode.

- And they drew the conclusion

that the vapors in the center wing tank had heated up

and made those vapors more volatile

and that at a certain point,

a spark ignited the center wing tank

and caused the catastrophic breakup of the aircraft,

so the NTSB came to the conclusion,

"Well, it must have been some faulty wiring

that caused the ignition," because this was an aged 747,

one of the first ones off the line.

♪ ♪

Because of the age of the aircraft,

there had to have been some type of sparking event

that created the ignition for the explosion.

[somber music]

That's our probable cause.

Now again, that standard is different

from what the FBI would be required to do.

I'm not saying that they were wrong,

and I hesitate on saying this in a public venue

because there are still families out there

suffering from this, but from my perspective,

that's still an unresolved question.

There was a certain amount of anomalies

and strange phenomena that occurred here

that created such a doubt in my own mind

that I cannot, as a professional,

accept that final cause that's in the report.

And that's all I'm gonna say.

- Do you feel the same way, Neil?

'Cause you did not come to any resolution.

- It was very frustrating

because we went down so many avenues

and were unable to come to a conclusion

and in the end, there were these unanswered questions

that sort of left the doubt out there

as to what actually really caused this.

- 16 buses brought the families

from Kennedy Airport to the edge of the Atlantic,

the ocean where they lost their fathers and mothers,

their sons and daughters,

and then everyone walked down to the water's edge.

Wreaths were rowed out into the surf.

Some mourners waded in on their own,

ankle-deep in the waters

where many of their relatives are still missing.

They cast their sorrow into the sea.

- I've always said from the beginning

and I say it today that we really don't know

what caused the demise of these 230 lost souls

in a very definitive, final way.

Having spent a good deal of my life,

17 1/2 months on this investigation,

it'll haunt me to my grave not knowing in my own heart

what conclusively happened to this plane.