The crash has also provoked a spate of completely unsubstantiated news coverage speculating about terrorism in skies or possible sabotage by workers who constructed the Boeing 767 EgyptAir plane in 1989.

The radar tracking of Flight 990's progress and transponder recordings from the flight minutes before the crash indicate the aircraft went into a precipitous dive, dropping from its 33,000-feet cruising altitude to 19,100 feet in just 36 seconds, before crashing into the Atlantic Ocean some 60 miles off Nantucket Island about half an hour after take off. Although the recovery effort has been hampered by weather and the bulk of the aircraft remains on the ocean floor under some 250 feet of water, some initial crash debris has been recovered, including one large section of the aircraft and personal items of passengers. Among these items are "none with burn marks that might have suggested an explosion," according to the New York Times.

Despite those findings, the Washington Post reported November 2 that "NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] chairman Jim Hall said today that nothing has been ruled out as a possible cause of the crash, and the FBI is continuing to review lists of passengers, maintenance crews, and others who had contact with the aircraft. The bureau also is bringing lab and bomb technicians" to be part of the investigation.

FBI agents have questioned numerous airport workers, from customer service agents, baggage handlers, and skycaps to mechanics, cleaners, and food handlers in Newark, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York — every airport the plane had been to since its arrival from Cairo.

The federal government agencies involved in the investigation of the 1996 crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, in which 230 people lost their lives, came under heavy criticism as the investigation into that crash dragged on. The FBI, NTSB, and the Clinton administration, together with the owners of TWA presented and acted on the sole theory that the crash was the result of a terrorist bombing or missile attack.

Despite the fact that not a single shred of evidence for this was found in the more than 95 percent of the aircraft recovered, the Clinton administration and Congress used the crash to push through draconian "antiterrorism" legislation, and to institute new "security" measures that further infringe on the rights of working people. These targeted airport workers and passengers from specific countries, especially in the Middle East and certain Latin American countries, including Cuba, for particular suspicion and assaults on their rights to privacy.

Evidence that the explosion was precipitated by problems in the design of the Boeing 747's center fuel tank was available from the beginning, but it was only in November of 1997 that the FBI announced that the crash of TWA Flight 800 was due to mechanical failure

Just one day prior to the EgyptAir crash, news broke that Boeing had done a study on similar problems with the fuel tanks on one of its military jumbo jets — similar in design to the 747 — 16 years prior to the TWA crash. However, the company did not make the report available to the NTSB until June 1999. Despite efforts by federal officials to minimize the impact of this report and their acceptance of the claim by Boeing officials that they did not intentionally hide the study from federal agencies investigating the TWA crash, the spotlight is once again on the safety of Boeing's aircraft.

A 1991 crash of a Boeing 767 similar to the EgyptAir plane has been highlighted in the course of the initial investigation into the latest disaster. It was determined that the Thai airline crash, which killed 223 people, resulted from mechanical malfunction of the thrust reverser in flight that caused the aircraft to go into a catastrophic dive. Thrust reversers are used to slow down aircraft on landing, but if deployed in flight, send an aircraft into a tailspin. Three years after the Thailand crash, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a series of major thrust-reverser repairs on all U.S.-registered 767s. While EgyptAir and other foreign carriers are not obliged to strictly abide by U.S. regulations, the November 2 Washington Post reported that the EgyptAir aircraft did make the modifications in 1993.

The New York Post and some other big-business media sources have struck an antilabor note in their coverage of the EgyptAir disaster. Reporting the day after the crash, New York Post staff writer Bill Sanderson pointed out that the 767 Egyptian airliner was built by Boeing machinists only two weeks prior to the Thai 767 that crashed in 1991. In a barely veiled attempt to blame the workers who built the plane, along with the union that organizes them, for the crash, Sanderson's article was headlined, "Jetliner built during a time of labor strife."

The two Boeing 767s were built "during one of the most turbulent times in the company's history," he wrote. The article goes on to note that the International Association of Machinists (IAM) were preparing to go out on strike, and did so on Oct. 4, 1989. Sanderson stated, "In addition to the money, a major issue in the 48-day strike was the heavy amount of overtime required of production workers, many of whom complained of being too tired to do their jobs properly." Some television reports have raised similar innuendo.

To be sure all possible bases were covered to take advantage of the crash to go after democratic rights, the New York Post ran another article in the same issue by Sanderson and Niles Lathem positing that only an explosion, and probably a bomb, could have caused the catastrophic destruction at that altitude that Flight 990 crashed. The piece quoted Mary Schiavo, an ex-inspector of the US department of Transportation, for authority.

It was accompanied by a side bar by Lathem entitled, "Some of the Usual Suspects," which listed "terrorist groups" and individuals who might have a "possible motive for a jetliner attack targeting Egypt and the United States." All of those listed were Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin.

Olga Rodríguez is a member of the IAM.  
 
 
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