Night Fall

“Okay… back to the streak of light.”

Captain Spruck continued, “I watched this red-orange streak of light closely as it continued its climb into the sky-”

“Excuse me. What was yourfirst impression?”

“My first, second, and lasting impression was that it was a surface-to-air missile.”

I had been trying to avoid the “M” word, but there it was. I asked, “Why? Why not a shooting star? Lightning? A skyrocket?”

“It was a surface-to-air missile.”

“Most people said their first impression was a leftover Fourth of July-”

“Not only was it a missile, it was aguided missile. It zigzagged slightly as it climbed, as though correcting its course, then it seemed to slow for a half second, and it made a distinct turn to the east-toward my position-then it seemed to disappear, perhaps behind a cloud, or perhaps it had expended its fuel and had become ballistic, or perhaps my view of it was now blocked by its target.”

Target. A TWA Boeing 747, designated as Flight 800 to Paris, with 230 people on board had become thetarget.

We both stayed silent, during which time I evaluated Captain Thomas Spruck’s statements. And as we’re taught to do, I considered his general demeanor, his appearance of truthfulness, and his intelligence. Captain Spruck got high marks in all categories of witness believability. Good witnesses, however, sometimes fall apart at the end-such as the time a very intelligent man who began as a good material witness in a disappearance case ended his statement with his theory that the missing person had been abducted by space aliens. I had dutifully noted that in my report with an asterisk explaining that I wasn’t fully convinced.

Witnesses also start to unravel under questioning, so I asked Captain Spruck, “Tell me again how far this object was from you.”

He answered patiently, “As I said, I believe, but I can’t be sure, that it originated over the horizon, which would be about six miles line of sight on the water with calm seas. But it could have been farther, of course.”

“So, you didn’t see an initial point of… let’s say, launch?”

“No.”

“What would that have looked like? I mean, how much light would that make?”

“A lot. I’d be able to see the glow lighting up the dark horizon, even if it was launched ten or twenty miles from my position.”

“But you didn’t?”

“To be honest, I don’t know what first caught my eye-the flash of a launch, or the red-orange streak of light rising off the horizon.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“No. A missile launch is notthat loud, especially from a distance, with the wind blowing toward the launch.”

“I see. And how far up was this object when you first recognized it as an ascending streak of light?”

“I can’t say unless I know the distance. Height is a product of distance and angle off the horizon. Simple trigonometry.”

“Right.” I was a little out of my element here, but interrogation techniques remained the same. I said, “Give me a good guess.”

He thought a moment and said, “Maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the water when I first saw it. This initial impression was reinforced as I watched it climb, and I was then able to get a feel for its speed and flight path. It was rising in a straight line as opposed to an arc, with small zigzag corrections, then a distinct turn as it locked on.”

“Locked on to what?”

“Its target.”

“Okay…” I asked him, “Did you ever see that CIA animation of what they thought happened?”

“I did. I own a copy of it.”

“Yeah, I need to get one. Okay, so in this animation, what they’re saying is that the center fuel tank vapors accidentally exploded because of an electrical short circuit. Right? And what all the eyewitnesses saw was a stream of burning fuel from a ruptured wing tank comingdown from the aircraft-not a streak of light comingup — toward the aircraft. In other words, people had it backwards in their minds. Theyheard the explosion before they saw it, then looked up, and mistook the burning stream of fuel for a rising rocket. What do you think?”

He looked at me, then pointed his thumb into the air and asked me, “This way is up. Right?”

“Last time I checked.” I said to him, “The other possibility, also shown in this animation, is that this aircraft actually continued to rise a few thousand feet, and what eyewitnesses saw was the burning aircraft ascending, which looked to people on the ground like a rising streak of light from a missile.” I asked him, “What do you think?”

“I think I know the difference between a streak of light, which is accelerating and ascending, trailing a white smoke plume, as opposed to a burning aircraft in its death throes. I’ve seen both.”

I had the disturbing thought that Special Agent Mayfield had done a better job of questioning Captain Spruck than I was doing. I asked him, “Is this basically the same testimony you gave Ms. Mayfield?”

“Yes.”

“Did she ask good questions?”

He looked at me as though I’d just asked a stupid question, but replied politely, “She did.” He added, “We went through the sequence of events for over an hour. She said she’d be back and could I please think about what I saw and call her if anything new came to mind.”

“And did you?”

“No. Two gentlemen-FBI agents-visited me the next day and told me they were going to do a follow-up interview and that Agent Mayfield had moved on to other witnesses. Apparently she did initial interviews… there were six to eight hundred witnesses according to a news report, and about two hundred of those saw the streak of light. The others saw only the explosion.”

“I read that, too. So these two guys-did you get their names?”

“Yes. And their cards.” He took two business cards from his pocket and gave them to me. I turned on the desk lamp and read the first card.Liam Griffith. That sort of surprised me, but not that much. The second card really surprised me. It was an FBI card, but the name on it was of a CIA guy-Mr. Ted Nash, to be more precise. This was the gentleman who I’d first met on the Plum Island case, then actually worked with on the Asad Khalil case. Ted had many a

I said to Captain Spruck, “Can I keep these cards?”

“Yes. Miss Mayfield said I could give them to you.”

“Good. And do you have Ms. Mayfield’s card?”

“No. Mr. Nash took her card.”

“Really? Okay, so what did these two guys talk to you about?”

“They had listened to the taped statements I’d given to Miss Mayfield and said they wanted to go over them again.”

“And did you ever get a transcribed statement of your taped interview to sign?”

“I did not.”

Very unusual. I said, “Okay, so these guys had a tape recorder, too?”

“Yes. Basically they wanted me to repeat what I’d said the day before.”

“And did you?”

“I did. They tried to find inconsistencies in what I was saying to them and what I’d said to Miss Mayfield.”

“And did they?”

“No.”

“Did they ask you about your eyesight?”

“Several times. I had perfect distance vision, then and still do.”

“Did they ask if you’d been drinking or on drugs?”

“They did. I told them I found the question insulting. I don’t take drugs, and I don’t sail when I’ve been drinking.”

To lighten the moment, I said, “I only drink with other people, or when I’m alone.”

It took him three seconds to get the joke, and he sort of laughed.