Crash search widens; experts talk of bomb; Clinton warns against rush to judgment;

By Matthew Brelis, Globe Staff and Pamela Ferdinand, Globe Correspondent

EAST MORICHES, N. Y.

Investigators yesterday searched oil-slicked waters off Long Island for signs of a possible bomb or extraordinary malfunction that could have caused TWA Flight 800 to explode 21 minutes after takeoff Wednesday night, killing all 230 Paris-bound travelers.

President Clinton warned against a rush to judgment, mentioning unfounded reports of international terrorism that attended the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City.

But as the FBI blocked off acres of seashore and more than 200 square miles of ocean as a crime scene, and bodies piled up in two makeshift morgues, aviation specialists said nothing but a bomb could account for such a disaster.

"It has to be a bomb," a highly placed federal transportation source said. "We have never had an airplane blow up like that from something mechanical happening inside the airplane. It's not impossible. We have had an awful lot of things happen in airplanes in the last 40 years, but nothing like this. Kerosene just does not explode."

Other possibilities, including the chance that the plane hit something or was shot at with a missile, were downplayed by investigators.

The plane, an early-vintage Boeing 747 bought by TWA in 1971, burst into flames and fell in chunks into the waters off East Moriches Inlet at about 8:40 Wednesday night as vacationers in boats and at seaside restaurants stared in horror.

Within minutes, witnesses recalled yesterday, the Coast Guard put out an unusual request over CB radios for civilian help in the rescue effort. Hundreds of boats answered the request, bobbing in the ocean all night in a flotilla that some likened to the famous rescue of British troops during the Battle of Dunkirk.

But by dawn, it became clear to the exhausted volunteers that there would be no survivors.

Among the dead were American, French and other European nationals of all ages and backgrounds. They included an Edgartown couple journeying to Paris for a romantic celebration of the wife's 80th birthday; a Bridgewater, Conn., man, Andrew Krukar, carrying a diamond ring with which he planned to propose to his girlfriend; a former Harvard College hockey star; and 16 students from a French class at a Pennsylvania high school, along with five adult chaperones.

TWA said that the total number of dead was 230, not 229 as reported Wednesday night. One of the flight attendants, Warren A. Dodge, 49, was from Ashland. Two of the four cockpit crew members were from Connecticut, Capt. Steve Snyder of Stratford, and Flight Engineer Richard Campbell of Ridgefield.

When the rescue efforts ended, the investigation began. FBI agents closed off the site and investigators began retrieving pieces of the shattered plane. Helicopters spotted the wreckage, which was then picked up by boats and piled on the deck of Coast Guard cutters in two piles: plane parts, and personal items.

Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, cautioned, "We have no evidence at this point that it was not an accident."

"We are not ready to say what this is at this point," said Jim Kallstrom, chief of the FBI antiterrorism task force at an evening briefing. But, he added, "we will get to the bottom of this, whatever it is."

With hundreds of thousands of athletes and visitors converging on Atlanta for tonight's opening of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the specter of terrorism struck an extra note of alarm: Security was stepped up at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport to protect the arriving Olympians.

In Boston, Massachusetts Port Authority officials put security teams on alert and deployed more State Police officers around Logan Airport. Travelers, hearing of this crash on the heels of a ValuJet crash in Miami in May that killed all 110 on board, expressed heightened concern about air-travel safety.

Among yesterday's other developments:

- A Tampa TV station, along with other news organizations, reported receiving calls purportedly from terrorist groups claiming responsibility for bombing Flight 800, but the State Department refused to comment on whether any of them could be genuine.

- An Arabic language newspaper reportedly received a letter before the crash promising a surprise attack on Americans. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the letter was "a general political tract" not related to the crash.

- TWA officials confirmed that the 747 had arrived in New York late Wednesday afternoon from Hellenikon Airport in Athens, which was declared unsafe by the US Department of Transportation last March for lax security. In May, after repeated entreaties from the Greek government, Transportation Secretary Federico Pena lifted the warning about the airport, saying reinspections had revealed it to be secure. Greek officials said the plane was under armed guard during its Athens layover.

- A TWA crew member who was in the cockpit of the 747 on the Athens-New York flight expressed his confidence that nothing was wrong with the plane's mechanics. Flight Engineer Albert J. Mundo, 62, looking shaken as he returned to his Marblehead home, said, "The airplane was fine." He added, "I lost several close friends, and I just don't feel like talking now."

- The Navy will provide investigators with sophisticated radar tapes of the plane's final minutes, according to sources close to the inquiry. The radar could disclose evidence of any small aircraft or missile in the Long Island area at the time of the crash. Federal Aviation Administration radar reportedly detected a blip merging with the jet shortly before the explosion. At an evening briefing, an FBI spokesman said there was no evidence of a missile or small plane in the crash area.

- An hour-long delay on the ground at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport was attributed to two separate problems related to the baggage hold, TWA spokesman Mark Abels said. Handlers retrieved a suitcase checked on the plane by a traveler who did not get on board; bags checked by people who do not get on the flight are considered grave security risks. But Abels said the passenger showed up just as the bag was removed. An additional half-hour delay occurred when a mechanical baggage ramp malfunctioned, Abels said.

- Federal sources said the plane's cockpit crew did not issue a distress call, suggesting that the jumbo jet exploded so suddenly that the crew never knew what happened. Investigators have yet to locate either the cockpit data recorder or the voice recorder. But officials expressed confidence that both would be found.

The apparent suddenness of the explosion fueled widespread speculation of a terrorist bombing. In other cases where 747s have had catastrophies at high altitudes, pilots were able to either land the plane or at least issue a warning.

In 1989, a United Airlines 747 was more than 4 miles in the air when a cargo door blew off, ripping a hole in the plane. Nine passengers were sucked out, but the pilot was able to land in Honolulu. When Soviet fighters shot down a Korean Air Lines 747 in 1983, the crew had time to radio air-traffic controllers.

"Planes like the 747 just don't go down like this one did," said Darryl Jenkins, president of the Aviation Foundation.

Investigators will closely monitor debris for any signs of an explosive device, sources said. Molecular traces of bomb material could attach to metal, cloth or even flesh. Bombs also shoot shrapnel, leaving a distinctive pattern of small holes with metal edges splayed outward. The pattern is different from the damage caused by mechanical failure, such as an engine falling off, which would slash wide gashes in the fuselage.

"It won't look the same," James Crippen, an explosives specialist with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, said of structural failures. "You'll get a big gaping hole."

Eyewitnesses described the final seconds of Flight 800 as a huge explosion, reminiscent of the 1986 explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

"It looked like a flare at first, then got real big, real wide, and you knew it wasn't a flare," said Janet Simmons, who was aboard a nearby pleasure boat. "You knew it was something bad. You just watched a big ball of flame go right back into the water. Then you saw the smoke. Then you heard four big booms like thunder."

Lt. Kevin Dunn, commander of the first ship on the scene of the crash, the Coast Guard cutter Adak, said, "We were on patrol south of Long Island around 8:30 and all of a sudden we saw a fireball, then a string of brilliant flames. We couldn't tell it was an aircraft at first, but we followed a trail of flames and debris to the site and when we got there, we knew."

By late yesterday, 140 bodies had been retrieved, according to New York's Suffolk County Coroner Charles V. Wetli. He said there was no way anyone could have survived the crash, which he described as having the same impact as striking a wall at 200 miles per hour. Only two bodies had been positively identified as of late last night; others will require dental records - which will be a problem because so many of the bodies appear to be teen-agers with good teeth, Whetli said.

As rescuers worked through the day, vacationers in the tiny village of East Moriches opened their homes and stores to the thousands of visitors from around the world.

The crash, they said, touched them in a way they'll never forget, especially those who participated in the all-night rescue efforts. Among the items they recalled pulling from the water: A postcard written in German, a ladies coat, a Norton Anthology of poetry, and a picture of a small dog.