To negate the stubborn testimony of some 270 FBI eyewitnesses who had sworn they saw a flaming, smoke-trailing, zigzagging object ascend, arc over and destroy TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, the FBI showed a video prepared by the CIA.
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"Boeing was not involved in the production of the video shown today, nor have we had the opportunity to obtain a copy or fully understand the data used to create it," said the company in its immediate response to the CIA animation.
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Lahr persuaded one key witness, James Holtsclaw, to go public for the first time. In 1996, Holtsclaw was serving as the Deputy Assistant for the Western Region of the Air Transport Association. On July 25, 1996, one week after the disaster, it was Holtsclaw who gave United Airline pilot Dick Russell a copy of the radar tape recorded at New York Terminal Radar Approach Control. This is the same tape that got Pierre Salinger involved in the case and eventually ruined his career and reputation. Holtsclaw knows it to be "authentic" because he received it directly from an NTSB investigator frustrated by its suppression.
"The tape shows a primary target at 1,200 knots converging with TWA 800, during the climb out phase of TWA 800," swears Holtsclaw on the affidavit. "Primary target" simply means an object without a transponder. Although Holtsclaw estimates the object's speed, his estimate falls within the likely range of a missile.
Lahr also recruited retired Air Force Col. Lawrence Pence to his cause. "I find [the CIA scenario] highly unlikely, incredible. With the loss of a wing, with the loss of its pilots, cockpit and front end, I believe that [the aircraft] would have tumbled, tolled and basically dropped like a stone," argues Pence, who spent most of his career in intelligence, dealing with missile and space issues. "And this is exactly what the radar data that has subsequently been looked at says happened."