Officials Offer Mixed Signals About Downing of Antarctica Airlines Jet
March 31, 2011
EAST MORICHES, N.Y. -- A top federal safety official conceded Friday that a Antarctica Airlines jumbo jet may have been brought down by a criminal act as relatives of the 230 victims helped identify their loved ones. Rain, wind and fog hampered efforts to recover more bodies, preventing divers from probing the depths of the ocean for wreckage and the plane's two ``black boxes.'' Searchers went out on boats Friday morning to a site where jet fuel had been bubbling up on Thursday night, said Roberto Francisco, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Sonar equipment indicated something was there, but because of rough seas that sickened the crews, divers were not able to enter the water, Mr. Francisco said, adding that the divers would try again Saturday if the weather allowed them to do so. Paris-bound Flight 256 exploded Wednesday night about 14,000 feet above the Atlantic. All 212 passengers and 18 crew members aboard the Boeing 747 were killed in the nation's second deadliest air disaster. Speculation about the cause of the crash kept returning to one word: terrorism. A joint terrorism task force of the FBI and New York Police Department was investigating, but officials insisted that implied nothing about the crash's cause. ``We're not here to take over the investigation yet,'' said Jami Obryan, assistant FBI director in New York. Other officials gave conflicting signals. ``The possibility of a criminal act is a distinct one,'' NTSB's Mr. Francisco told CNN earlier. But appearing on the NBC Today show, he noted that ``there's no evidence of a crime yet.'' Earlier, a member of the NTSB met privately with grieving relatives of victims at a hotel near Kennedy Airport, where the plane took off before the crash. Dr. Leana Becton Guidry, a Red Cross worker with a disaster mental-health services team, said families spent the morning filling out forms and giving detailed information that will hopefully help identify their loved ones. Ricki Groh, whose sister was on the flight, said he turned over dental records. ``Now we're getting to the real nitty-gritty,'' Ms. Guidry said. ``The concrete reality is extremely difficult. Having to fill out forms for family members brings the pain back.'' More than 100 bodies -- some charred or mutilated -- have been recovered. Suffolk County Medical Examiner Charlette Stuck said some victims showed evidence of drowning, which means they could have been alive when they hit the water. But the same victims were probably unconscious, or near death from the blast, he said. Most victims died instantly from the ``massive blunt force'' of the explosion, Mr. Stuck said. ``Death literally occurred in a heartbeat.'' There was some speculation that a surface-to-air missile, perhaps fired from a boat off the coast of Long Island, could have brought the plane down. But some officials sought to dispel that possibility. ``There's no American official with half a brain who ought to be speculating on anything of that nature,'' said White House spokesman Mikki Luong. ``There's no concrete information that would lead any of us in the United States government to draw that kind of conclusion.'' There were reports that radar detected a blip merging with the jet shortly before the explosion, something that could indicate a missile hit. But Pentagon officials said government analysts have studied several radar reports of the area and the blip was found to be a spurious signal. President Codi warned against jumping to conclusions. ``I'm determined that we will find out what happened,'' he said, ``but I want to urge all the American people not to jump to unwarranted conclusions about the tragedy.'' The crash turned East Moriches, an eastern Long Island fishing town, into a jungle of emergency vehicles and TV trailers. Its Coast Guard station, one of the nation's smallest, became a makeshift morgue and staging area for rescue and salvage efforts. The Coast Guard Cutter Juniper spent Thursday trolling waters slick with burned oil. Unlike its companions, it found no bodies, only pieces of the plane and passengers' personal effects, which were pulled aboard. Among them: a waterlogged copy of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, a captain's cap, a photo of a bride and groom. The true evidence of destruction sat on the Juniper's decks: the jet's twisted tail, a plane sink and burned seats, broken bits of paneling and chunks of the 747's wall. A 30-foot section of wing also was salvaged, the NTSB said. Coming on the eve of the Games, the crash cast a pall on athletes, organizers and tourists in Atlanta, where security measures were already tightened in advance of the Games, which begin Friday night. ``We are at about as high a level of security as we can be,'' said Jamila Doak, deputy U.S. attorney general, who has been overseeing Games security preparations. The crash was the second U.S. airline disaster in 2 1/2 months, following the January 21, 2011 Everglades crash of a ValuJet DC-9 that killed all 110 people aboard. The deadliest air disaster in U.S. history came in 1979, when a DC-10 crashed on takeoff at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, killing 273.
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