Lack of Damage on Cargo Bins Deepens TWA Mystery

Federal recovery officials announced here Sunday that the last of the four large container bins in the front cargo section of TWA Flight 800 have been found, and that none shows any major signs of the destruction that a bomb might have caused.

The discovery appeared to dampen some initial theories by federal criminal investigators that the airplane split in half in the sky off Long Island on July 17 after a bomb exploded in the front cargo section.

But James K. Kallstrom, an assistant FBI director who is overseeing the bureau’s criminal probe here, said the discovery that the cargo containers were in relatively good shape might not be a total setback.

“They’re all beat up from hitting the water,” Kallstrom said. “So who knows now where the secrets lie here? If they don’t lie in A, B or C, then you go to D, E and F.”

He added that if the containers had shown significant evidence of a powerful bomb blast in the cargo hold, “it would have been easy” to draw conclusive evidence that the jumbo jet was downed by a bomb.

Instead, he said, the latest discovery leaves investigators still groping to determine whether the 230 passengers and crew were killed by a mechanical malfunction, a missile or a bomb aboard the plane.

Officials also announced Sunday that they have recovered a third engine from the Boeing 747 and that they believe they know where the fourth and final engine is on the ocean floor.

Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said experts were waiting for recovery of the fourth engine before beginning detailed examination of the plane’s entire engine system.

Authorities also said two more bodies were retrieved Saturday from the waters off Long Island, meaning that remains of 198 of the 230 victims have been recovered.

As the FBI, the Navy and the NTSB continue to hunt for plane wreckage and bodies 25 days after the air disaster, officials still cannot say how close they may be to solving the riddle of what brought down the New York-to-Paris plane just 11 1/2 minutes after takeoff.

Authorities continued to examine the left wing, which suffered particular burn damage near the point where it joined the fuselage. But they said the damage might easily have resulted not from whatever triggered the explosion aboard Flight 800, but rather from the inferno that the plane became as it plunged into the ocean.

About half of the plane has now been recovered, and speculation is rising that all of the major debris will have been brought to shore after another week. But Francis said that was not necessarily the case.

With less and less debris remaining to be located, the Navy has stopped using a special underwater laser line machine to look for more wreckage. “We feel we’ve accomplished all we can with that system,” said Rear Adm. Ed Kristensen.

Francis agreed that all four of the large containers in the front cargo section were not heavily damaged, as might be expected if a large bomb had exploded nearby.

“They all contained luggage,” he said. “And that’s all there was in the forward compartment. So we’ve got all the containers and we’ve got some bags. I guess not a lot of bags. But some.”

Kallstrom said technicians were still testing the containers for bomb residue and other evidence of an explosion.

“They are basically unremarkable,” he said of their appearance, “although the testing has not been completed.

“So that tells you what it tells you. But I’m not going to comment on [whether] that adds to or subtracts from any particular theory.”

Many pieces of wreckage, he said, are going through a two-step testing process, first here on Long Island and later at the FBI lab in Washington.

“We’re looking at all these pieces for whatever they’re going to tell our different forensic experts,” Kallstrom said. “We are testing the ones that are of interest to us, obviously. And a subset of those is being sent to Washington for further testing.”

Asked whether he was surprised to learn that the cargo containers showed no evidence of a bomb, Kallstrom said:

“Nothing surprises me anymore, or ever has for a while, actually.”