James Sanders was the first investigative reporter to get beyond the  TWA 800 press releases issued by the FBI. He paid a high price for doing so. If Sanders seems a bit cynical, the reader will soon understand why. -- Jack Cashill

America’s citizens must learn the truth: Reality is what remains after federal propagandists interpret fact. This is an absolute truth for citizens living in a failed republic -- including the United States in 2016.       

I’m a medically retired police officer from southern California with more than thirty years experience investigating federal lawlessness buried within the National Archives storage boxes and the Freedom of Information Act. In my investigation of TWA Flight 800 among other incidents, I discovered that the greater story was the fall of the American Republic.

Over the decades it became abundantly evident the federal National Security State does not care what the law states. It will fight to keep the worst sins classified even though the law says documents classified secret and more than fifty years old must be declassified with only two very narrow exceptions: weapons of mass destruction and the name of a source.        

Whenever the United States goes to war, the Republic ceases to exist for the duration. After World War I the defenders of a republican form of government rose up and forced a return to limited government, the Republic given to us by the Founding Fathers.

America’s road to Big Government and an expansionist foreign policy was beaten back. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s rise to power brought the Republic once again under attack. Expansionist foreign policy cannot exist within a republic.

A republic exists to serve the needs of its citizens. Expansionist foreign policy within a National Security State exists to serve the perceived needs of the State. A common interest between an individual’s freedom and the National Security State cannot exist in perpetuity.        

Ten years into my second career -- journalism -- July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 was shot down by the United States Navy just south of West Hampton, Long Island, shortly after 2030 hours. It was the second time in four days the United States Navy shot something out of the sky in the waters south of Long Island, and I have the video to prove it.  

The 747 was seriously injured when the force of a thermite warhead, unique to the United States Navy in 1996, struck in the area where the leading edge of the right wing attached to the fuselage. A few feet away was engine number three, the first significant piece of the 747 to hit the water about 14,000 feet below, so close to JFK Airport that it was outside the initial search area.  

Its factual location was so damaging to the FBI/CIA cover-up ordered by the National Security State that its actual location was expunged from the debris recovery log and moved more than 5,000 feet to the east to comport with a mechanical explanation.

Witness 73 told the FBI that she observed a missile strike the right side of the 747 at the point where the leading edge of the right wing attaches to the fuselage. All non-altered evidence confirms her observation. The FBI/CIA cover-up team altered her statement, but not just hers.

For instance, Mike Wire, Witness 571, was declared by the FBI/CIA cover-up team to be the most important witness, so important that if his original statement was correct, TWA Flight 800 must be investigated as a shoot-down.

So the cover-up team concocted a fictional follow-up interview with Wire, who allegedly confessed that his initial statement was completely false in all important aspects. Wire then supposedly agreed with the FBI/CIA cover-up team that their version of what happened was 100% correct. 

These factually false alterations of witness statements are each felonies that I (and other investigators) uncovered during my investigation of the FBI/CIA cover-up team. 

The normal American is like the frog in the high school lab experiment. Put the frog on a hot skillet and it will instantly hop off. Put the frog on a cool skillet and gradually increase the heat and the frog will sit there until it dies. That’s what happens to the normal citizen’s brain in this era of National Security State operating under the façade of Democracy.

The 1992 presidential election opened America’s political sewer floodgates. Political bodies soon surfaced: Billy Dale and the White House Travel Office; Drug Running out of Arkansas’s Mena Airport; Whitewater, Hillary’s cattle futures and ongoing bimbo eruptions where the President of these United States was constantly sexually harassed by a seemingly never-ending stream of morally depraved women.

Dominant media, particularly the New York Times and network television News were, with some justification, accused by those not of the extreme left of being thoroughly corrupted protecting their President during the never-ending stream of scandal and lawlessness Hillary insists was nothing more than a “vast right wing conspiracy.”

I stepped into this boiling caldron of political filth shortly after TWA Flight 800 was shot down. Dominant media had already circled the wagons, protecting the Clinton con game that must be run in a presidential election year when a horrendous event occurred, the possible murder of 230 people onboard TWA Flight 800. The National Security State had already tasked the FBI and CIA to come up with a believable con.

One medically retired California police officer backed by one medium size California newspaper. What could possibly go wrong?

The level of disgust within the alleged investigation into the downing of TWA Flight 800 made it easy to develop sources. By far the most productive was Terry Stacey, a TWA 747 pilot assigned to the NTSB side of the investigation. He was confident a cover-up was in progress.

Stacey met almost nightly with TWA legal counsel where the details of this suspicion were discussed. A second source at the top of the FBI, within Louis Freeh’s inner circle, soon developed. Eventually the evidence of a government conspiracy became so obvious, a large number of TWA Flight 800 investigators began to form a secret team.

Then my wife and I were indicted for conspiring with Terry Stacey to have residue from the thermite warhead tested. The federal judge refused to allow us a First Amendment defense and removed all potential jurors that would not swear they believed the federal government couldn’t possibly engage in the cover-up I alleged. Second Circuit Appellate Judge Sonya Sotomayor (now on the Supreme Court) conspired with two other temporary judges to alter facts from the trial in order not to overturn the verdict.    

The Supreme Court effectively killed Freedom of the Press in the 1970s. Individual rights have been superseded by the perceived needs of the National Security State. This trend will continue unabated.

James Sanders is one of family members, whistleblowers, researchers and others who have not given up the pursuit of the truth. To learn more about their story please read Jack Cashill’s introductory article in this series or his book, TWA 800: The Crash, The Cover-Up, The Conspiracy (Regnery: July 5).