TWA Flight 800 Crash Not as Reported: Documentary

Conspiracy theorists have long suspected TWA Flight 800 was brought down not by the NTSB's officially determined cause (a gas tank explosion), but by something less accidental, and a new documentary debuting next month will give them quite a bit of fuel. The film includes testimony from six high-level "whistleblowers," as Fox News calls them, all of whom were on the original investigation team. They say it was actually "one or more ordnance explosions outside the aircraft" that caused the 1996 crash, according to a statement from the producers, who explained the six "waited until after retirement to reveal how the official conclusion by the (NTSB) was falsified and lay out their case."

The whistleblowers do not go so far as to claim the plane was shot down (one popular theory is that it was hit by a terrorist missile), nor do they theorize about the source of the "ordinance explosion," Fox News reports. But they intend to petition the NTSB to reopen its investigation. Witnesses who saw the Boeing 747 explode and crash into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island claimed to have seen "a streak of light and a fireball," CNN reports. Investigators, however, said that was likely just burning fuel coming out of the plane's wing tank. TWA Flight 800 premieres on the 17th anniversary of the crash, July 17, on cable network EPIX TV. (More TWA stories.)