CENSORSHIP WARNING: Media and Self Censorship Keep Us Divided

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CENSORSHIP WARNING: Media and Self Censorship Keep Us Divided

Both parties and most media outlets stand at attention when lies regarding our national security are told by our intelligence community. Even blatant ones. We all know about the lies that got us into Iraq in 2003, but few may recall the CIA’s “Not A Missile” propaganda after a missile allegedly took out TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996. The case is now at the Second Circuit in New York, but I doubt you heard about it, because no American official or major news outlet dares question the CIA — because, as Senator Chuck Schumer put it in a January 2017 MSNBC interview, the intelligence community “has six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

Families of crash victims are now suing the DoD and U.S. defense contractors who are most likely responsible for the crash. Indeed, key evidence has been withheld, altered, and kept out of the public conversation. Eyewitnesses were told to “keep quiet,” and the press largely stopped asking questions. That is what media and self-censorship does: it doesn’t settle a question — it allows a false narrative from powerful institutions to stand, because everyone is afraid to speak up, even U.S. Senators. Thirty years later, the families are still fighting in federal court for the right to simply present their evidence.

That’s exactly why stories like this matter. Meanwhile, hot-button issues like gun control and abortion are kept front and center, dividing and distracting the public, while U.S. defense contractors keep profiting, largely unexamined.

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The Second Circuit has proposed February 2027 for oral argument in the pending lawsuit by families of TWA Flight 800 crash victims against Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and the DOD. The final brief was filed on July 27, 2026 with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the government concealed and altered evidence consistent with a missile strike that caused the Boeing 747 to explode shortly after it took off from JFK International Airport on its way to Paris. Thirty years after the airplane crashed on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people aboard, this lawsuit is seeking to show how evidence actively concealed by United States government officials for decades misrepresented the true cause of the crash.

In ruling on a motion to dismiss the initial lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, Federal Judge Angel Kelley wrote that the families’ case could move forward because of the “affirmatively false or fraudulent representations made by the United States” about the cause of the plane’s explosion. At this procedural stage, the law required Judge Kelley to accept the factual allegations in the families’ complaint as true — her ruling was that, taking those allegations as true, the families’ case could proceed; at the same time, an experienced national law firm presented those allegations, knowing that it could be sanctioned if they were false.

The government and defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon moved to dismiss the case, arguing that the suit was time-barred under the Federal Tort Claims Act’s (FTCA) two-year statute of limitations. But Judge Angel Kelley, on Sept. 29, 2023, ruled that the statute of limitations was suspended until April 15, 2021 — when physicist and expert witness Dr. Thomas Stalcup met with the plaintiffs to reveal new evidence supporting their missile claim. Stalcup had obtained the evidence through Freedom of Information Act litigation.

The Federal Court for the Eastern District of New York then dismissed the case — not on the merits, but by holding that agreements the families signed in the 1990s related to the official fuel-tank scenario precluded the suit. The families will argue at the Appellate court that the same fraud the MA District Court acknowledged voids those prior agreements and allows this action. The July 27 brief asks the Second Circuit to reverse that dismissal and allow the families to obtain records, examine witnesses, and present the physical and radar evidence in court.

Two Developments Never Fully Presented to the Public

• Newly discovered Navy radar tapes recorded an object “heading straight for TWA 800” prior to “impact.” Sworn testimony recounts the extraordinary removal of those radar recordings shortly after the crash.
• Newly discovered evidence that a critical piece of the reconstructed aircraft was physically altered.

The families’ lawsuit alleges that TWA Flight 800 was destroyed during military missile activity and that evidence contradicting the government’s center-fuel-tank explanation was withheld, removed, and altered.

Newly Discovered Alteration of a Critical Fuselage Component

During an inspection of the reconstructed aircraft in Virginia, the families’ experts examined a large lower-left fuselage component identified as LF-24A. Contemporaneous investigative photographs and NTSB documentation recorded that the component had been curled approximately 180 degrees inward into the aircraft’s cargo area, consistent with a missile blast.

However, LF-24A had been flattened back into its pre-event shape and no longer displayed any inward deformation. The location of LF-24A is significant: it came from the lower-left fuselage, precisely where the aircraft broke completely in half in mid-flight, and was recovered in the earliest debris field. The families contend that the original inward deformation was evidence of an external explosive force, and that flattening the component concealed a feature inconsistent with the government’s official explanation.

Court filings state that, after being asked for photographs or records explaining how, when and why LF-24A was changed, the NTSB did not provide documentation answering those questions. The families characterize the alteration as potential spoliation of uniquely important physical evidence.

Sworn Testimony About the Removal of Navy Radar Tapes

The appeal also highlights testimony obtained during years of Freedom of Information Act litigation. Steven Habeger, who directed an East Coast Navy testing facility, testified that within minutes of the crash he was ordered to permit FBI personnel to remove every Navy radar tape at his facility that might have recorded the TWA Flight 800 incident. Rear Admiral George Huchting corroborated the removal and testified that the only comparable handling of Navy radar tapes he could recall occurred after the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down Iran Air Flight 655.

Government records later obtained through FOIA also referred to an original Navy radar tape showing an object “heading straight for TWA 800,” as well as radar information describing an object before “impact” and spiraling away afterward. According to the families’ pleadings, those materials were not incorporated into the NTSB’s public investigation or made available to the families at the time.

Families Seek Their First Opportunity for Discovery

The action was brought by family members and representatives of passengers killed aboard Flight 800 against the United States, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin. Their complaint alleges negligence, gross negligence, wrongful death, product-liability violations, and a coordinated concealment of evidence concerning missile-system testing near commercial air routes.

“This anniversary is not only a moment to remember the 230 people who were lost. It is also a moment to ask why critical radar recordings were removed, why a central piece of physical evidence was altered, and why the families have still never been permitted to obtain answers through discovery. Thirty years is long enough.”

— Dr. Tom Stalcup, physicist and families’ consultant

The families emphasize that they are asking that the evidence be preserved, that responsible officials answer questions under oath, and that their claims be decided on a complete factual record rather than dismissed at the courthouse door.

More From Judge Kelley’s Ruling

A note on these quotes: this ruling came on a motion to dismiss. At that stage, a judge is legally required to accept the facts alleged in the complaint as true for purposes of deciding whether the case may proceed — it is not a trial, and it is not a finding of fact based on evidence. Judge Kelley’s language below reflects what the families alleged and what the court was required to assume true in allowing the case to move forward, not a final judicial determination that these events occurred as described.

“This evidence reveals that the United States and its agencies, acting in concert with Contractor Defendants, conducted initial operational tests of the SPY-1D(V) radar upgrade with testing that involved firing at least one missile with a live warhead in May of 1996…”

“Instead of conducting testing away from potential flight paths of other aircrafts, SPY-1D(V) was tested on an expedited basis in and around a land-based testing site called the Combat Systems Engineering and Development Site (‘CSEDS’) in New Jersey, which is a highly congested area.”

Judge Kelley also noted in her decision that evidence obtained through physicist and families’ consultant Tom Stalcup’s FOIA case indicated that certain federal agencies, including the FBI and CIA, had taken active steps to discredit the missile theory, including suppressing radar evidence showing an object arcing toward Flight 800 just before the plane exploded.

“Throughout the course of its investigation, the FBI removed all copies of Navy radar tapes and refused to allow the [National Transportation Safety Board] to conduct eyewitness interviews or review the FBI’s results regarding the cause of the TWA 800 crash.”

“These copies of the Navy radar tapes were finally released and show an object ‘heading straight for TWA 800.’ This information appears to corroborate previously discredited testimony from eyewitnesses, many of whom maintained that they saw something ‘arcing’ toward TWA 800 before the plane exploded, but were not permitted to testify at any NTSB hearings. Some eyewitnesses reported being threatened by the FBI to ‘keep quiet.’”

Case: Krick et al. v. Raytheon Company et al.
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

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Source Documents

Read the underlying filings and government releases directly:

• Full Press Release / Federal Lawsuit Filing Summary (PDF)
• First Circuit Notice — fuselage component (LF-24A) alteration (PDF)
• FBI Release 1 — Navy radar tape records (PDF)
• FBI Release 2 — Navy radar tape records (PDF)
• MA District Court Ruling — Judge Kelley’s decision (PDF)

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