Word: crashing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this was the case, U.S. counterterrorism officials suspect the bomber wanted the device to go off much later in the flight, so the incriminating debris would be lost farther out in the Atlantic. The device could have malfunctioned and exploded early. That gives investigators a lucky break. With the crash occurring in 120-ft. water, "there will be a lot of stuff we can collect," says a U.S. intelligence official. "We'll find out what went on here. And if it was a bomb, we'll find out who made...
Theory after theory flickered across the news last week, with reports of suspicious cargo that might have slipped onto the plane or of manifestos claiming responsibility for the deed. But any case for a bomb--and against bombers--begins with hard evidence from the crash site itself. And so last week the U.S. Coast Guard methodically raked up the debris off Long Island, 16 miles south of Moriches Inlet. Searchers ranged over an area of 240 square miles, neatly subdivided into nine grids. Each grid was systematically combed in a zigzag pattern; every piece of debris, of trash, every personal...
...surf. He and his lab team will conduct microscopic examinations of pieces of the plane's skin and infrastructure, looking for metal damage characteristic of a powerful bomb blast. "An explosion generates temperatures and velocities of detonation that are far greater than those encountered in a crash scenario due to mechanical failure," says Chris Ronay, Thurman's predecessor as chief of the FBI bomb unit. "You get torturing, feathering, pitting and tearing in metal that's entirely different from damage inflicted by a fire or a fall...
...blasted out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, brought down by 14 oz. of plastic explosives packed into a radio-cassette recorder in a piece of luggage. At least the modern era was supposed to have begun then. Subsequent investigations revealed deep fissures in U.S. airline-security systems. The crash also elicited heartfelt promises, in the form of the 1990 Aviation Security Improvement Act, to ensure that the tragedy would not be repeated...
Among other measures, the 1990 legislation required the FAA to speed up explosives-detection research, to heighten security checks on airport personnel and to release passenger manifests within three hours of a crash. The deadline set by Congress: November 1993. The FAA failed to adhere to that timetable, blaming Congress for setting overly stringent standards and requiring complicated tests of the new technologies. But that same year--five full years after Lockerbie--the inspector general's office of the Department of Transportation released a report blasting the FAA's overall security program. It is the only such report that...