TV News Review

As part of the coverage of the 9/11 anniversary of the terrorist attacks, ‘Fox & friends’ this morning had a writer from the magazine Popular Mechanics, which did a special issue in March 2005 about debunking the 9/11 theories, to explain away several of the 9/11 conspiracy theories that have sprung up. The writer explained the scientific information to debunk such theories as that the steel in the buildings couldn’t have melted, so the buildings must have been brought down using explosives planted by the government. The writer also explained that cell phones can work on a plane and that many of the calls were placed using phones on the plane and not cell phones.

Later in the show F&F had as a guest former FBI assistant director James K. Kallstrom to discuss if New York is safer now than on 9/11 and what changes need to be made. Kallstrom was the first Director of the New York State Office of Public Security, an office that was created by then NY Governor Pataki after 9/11. The office is charged with coordinating a comprehensive counter-terrorism and “all-hazards” prevention, preparedness, and response strategy to protect the people of New York State.

While with the FBI, Kallstrom headed the FBI’s investigation into the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800. The official explanation for the explosion and crash, killing all aboard, was faulty wiring in the center fuel cell that sparked an explosion. While this was the government’s official finding, there are many that feel that flight 800 was downed due to terrorism and that assistant director Kallstrom over saw a government cover-up of this terrorist attack.

You ask where is the irony? The irony is that F&F booked one guest to dis-spell claims of a government conspiracy to fake a terrorist attack. Then later they have a guest that many accuse of being in charge of the government’s covering up a terrorist attack.

It would be nice to see F&F spend as much time and effort considering if the TWA flight 800 was a terrorist attack as they spend debunking the conspiracy claims that 9/11 wasn’t a terrorist attack.
The next time they have Kallstrom as a guest maybe they should ask him if he really believes that 670 eyewitnesses don’t know the difference between down and up. Maybe they can ask Kallstrom why he sent a letter to the NTSB Chairman Jim Hall persuading him to ban all eyewitness presentations from an official NTSB hearing because the eyewitness discussion had the possibility “of undermining the CIA’s work”. Lastly maybe they should ask Kallstrom that if TWA 800 was downed due to terrorism might the government have taken the terrorist threat more seriously and possibly avoided 9/11 all together.

One Eyed Man