A new documentary backed by retired investigators claims that there is new evidence to suggest that the official report on the tragic 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash was wrong.
According to CNN, Tom Stalcup, who co-produced the documentary that will be out next month, said that the new evidence shows that there is “solid proof that there was an external detonation.”
Stalcup told CNN’s New Day, “Of course, everyone knows about the eyewitness statements, but we also have corroborating information from the radar data, and the radar data shows a(n) asymmetric explosion coming out of that plane -- something that didn't happen in the official theory.”
He added that several people he has spoke with are all making similar findings, “that there was an external force -- not from the center wing tank, there's no evidence of that -- but there is evidence of an external explosion that brought down that plane.”
CBS News reports that the PAris-bound flight crashed off the coast of Long Island and killed 230 people. The National Transportation Safety Board did a four-year investigation of the crash, concluding that it was a center feul tank explosion brought on by an electrical short circuit. Although the documentary calls on the NTSB to do a new investigation, the agency said on Wednesday that it stands by its original findings.
“The TWA Flight 800 investigation lasted four years...Investigators took great care reviewing, documenting and analyzing facts and data and held a five-day hearing to gather additional facts before determining the probable cause of the accident during a two-day Board meeting,” the NTSB said.
The NTSB said it might consider a petition for a new investigation, but the petition “must be based on the discovery of NEW evidence or on a showing that the Board's findings are erroneous.”
“The family members need to know what happened to their loved ones,” Stalcup told CNN.
Even thoguh it has been 17 years since the crash, there ares still many skeptics who think that nefarious forces brought the plane down. Some conspiracy theorists suggest that it was a bomb, while others say there could have been a Navy missile that accidentaly hit it.