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In a Newsmaker interview, Jim Lehrer asks James Kallstrom, FBI Assistant Director in charge of the criminal investigation, some tough questions regarding the crash of TWA Flight 800.

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JIM LEHRER: We go first tonight to a status report on the investigation into the crash of TWA Flight 800. The plane went down four months ago on July 17th, killing all 230 people on board. No definitive cause for the crash has yet been established. Our update on the search for answers comes from James Kallstrom, the FBI Assistant Director in charge of the criminal investigation. Mr. Kallstrom, welcome.

JAMES KALLSTROM, Assistant Director, FBI: Thanks, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: How close do you believe you are right now to knowing what caused that plane to go down?

JAMES KALLSTROM: You know, Jim, four months and two days and we still don't have an answer. We're a lot closer from the standpoint that we have a lot of the aircraft, so we can look at a lot of it and say that we don't have the forensic evidence, the metallurgy evidence. But we still don't have an answer. We don't have definitively what happened. Was it a bomb? Was it a missile, or mechanical failure, you know, and we're still missing one of the fuel pumps, some of the fuel probes. So today, as we're dredging the ocean and still bringing up pieces, unfortunately, with the great team we have, with the hard-working, dedicated people that have worked day and night on this for four months, we still don't have the answer. I wish we did.

JIM LEHRER: How much of the plane have you recovered?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, you know, I think it's probably 95 percent/90 percent, somewhere. It's hard to judge, Jim. The plane's in twenty/thirty thousand pieces.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

JAMES KALLSTROM: But we have a good portion of it. We'd guessed that the hurricanes that came through here buried a lot of the debris, and our guess was right. The trawlers are picking up the pieces. We're still looking for that piece or pieces, or a combination of pieces, that are going to give us the clues. We're in the ninth inning. It sure is a good analogy here, but we don't want to guess, we don't want to speculate. We want to know definitively what happened here. And we, unfortunately, don't have critical mass in any of the theories yet.

JIM LEHRER: When you say ninth inning, you mean that this game is almost over, or do you mean in terms of recovering the full 100 percent of the airplane?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Yeah. In terms of recovery, you know, we're in the closing chapters of bringing the pieces up. And it's possible that when the dredging is done at some point in time that we still have missing pieces. We hope that's not the case. But it's possible.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the latest new public report was that of a Pakistan airlines pilot who said he saw "something with lights in the sky" near where this TWA plane went down that night. Have you determined what that might have been?

JAMES KALLSTROM: We think it was a meteorite shower, Jim. We're not absolutely sure. We've interviewed the pilot. He's a highly experienced pilot, appears to be very competent, has a good memory of what he saw. We have no doubt that he saw what he described, an object he thought ascending from his left to his right. We're in the process of looking at radar tapes and other things to tell us if we can know for sure there was some other event. But there were reports that evening of meteorite showers. They were reported widely throughout Suffolk County.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. And the National Weather Service confirmed it, did they not?

JAMES KALLSTROM: More than likely, Jim, that's what it is, but we're still looking into it.

JIM LEHRER: Is it possible, Mr. Kallstrom, that this--that a meteor hit this airplane and caused it to crash?

JAMES KALLSTROM: I think it's highly unlikely. I mean, we've looked at that. We've had, you know, our plea to people to tell us about theories. We've gotten some well-reasoned, well thought out scientific analysis of that. We don't think that happened. We still haven't--you know, we haven't said it hasn't happened. It's still up there on the board. We just don't know. We need that piece of the airplane that gives us that telltale sign, be it mechanical, be it a bomb, or be it a missile.

JIM LEHRER: Has there ever been a case where an airplane was dropped by a meteor, falling meteor?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Not to my knowledge, Jim, but--

JIM LEHRER: Yeah.

JAMES KALLSTROM: --I guess it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

JIM LEHRER: I got you. All right. Have you found any no credible evidence that there was a bomb aboard this plane?

JAMES KALLSTROM: We still don't have it. Jim, we had the chemicals early on that corporately--we decided individually--individually we decided not to say that that translated to a bomb, and we had good reason for making that judgment. Chemicals can get on airplanes through other means. And then we found out later on about the training of the dogs, and not that we know absolutely that that's how the chemicals got there, through training, but I think without other evidence of the metal--the forensics to go with that--it really doesn't get us too far.

JIM LEHRER: Wasn't the expectation at the beginning that this was, in fact, caused by a bomb, just because of the climate in the world at the time? Did you not maybe even yourself think that just as a professional--hey, this thing looks and smells like a bomb to me?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Sure. I thought it was a good chance that it was a criminal act, and based on that premise, we conducted a criminal investigation. So we could preserve the evidence, the eyewitnesses, the people that saw things in the sky, so we could do the interviews in case we found out that it was, that we'd have the benefit of the fresh, the good information. At the very beginning Bob Francis and myself--

JIM LEHRER: He's the assistant director of the NTSB--

JAMES KALLSTROM: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: --who's been your counterpart in this whole thing.

JAMES KALLSTROM: That's correct, the vice chairman.

JIM LEHRER: Vice chairman. I'm sorry. I said that wrong.

JAMES KALLSTROM: And Jim Hall, the chairman--have had a very good relationship. We've worked very, very well together. It's been a great team effort. Our goal and their goal are the same--to recover the plane, find out what happened. If it's mechanical, NTSB wants to issue recommendations to FAA and the air industry obviously. If it's criminal, and, you know, we want to move to identify, you know, who would do such a horrendous act and locate them and bring them to the bar of justice so they don't do it again.

JIM LEHRER: I'm sorry. Just even without physical evidence that there was a bomb, or that it was a criminal act, you have proceeded, as I understand it, you have proceeded on the basis that it could have been a criminal act, is that right, in terms of terrorism and all that sort of thing?

JAMES KALLSTROM: That's correct, and I think, you know, that's the way to do it, not to stay in back and wait four or five months to find out, you know, it's not mechanical, it's something else, and then we have witnesses with four-month-old memories, and I think we've done the right thing here. We've worked together as a team. We've assisted NTSB with their mission. They've assisted us. The other law enforcement people have done a super job. The Navy, you know, the business of Pierre Salinger saying the Navy had something to do with this tragedy, the Navy were the heroes. The Navy divers--heroes--the law enforcement divers from the state police and the New York City police and Suffolk County and FBI--heroes--and just remarkable job that they did, a very caring and professional and just totally remarkable job.

JIM LEHRER: On the Pierre Salinger thing, his allegation or his suggestion or whatever you want to call it that a Navy, U.S. Navy missile fired accidentally downed this plane, you rejected that out of hand. You feel as strongly now as you did a week or so ago when you did that?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Yes, sir, but it's important to note that--I mean, we looked at that from the very beginning, we put all that stuff up on the board, and we looked very closely at were there military assets involved? I mean, we asked the questions. We didn't just take the answer from the military. We looked behind it. We had independent ways of verifying the location of different assets. You know, I can tell you that the U.S. military was not involved in this. The U.S. Navy did not shoot down this airplane.

JIM LEHRER: Did your agents interview Salinger?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Yes, we did, sir.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. And you're just convinced he just had some bad information?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, you know, it's disappointing. I remember as a college student watching him when he was the press secretary to the president and always had a high opinion of the man. The first time I learned about this story I didn't believe that he would have said such a thing. And then certainly he came on the television, and I saw for my own eyes, but he was dealing with information that was hearsay at best, three or four months old, stuff that we'd looked at and rejected, and I told him that, and that I wished he had come to us, I wished he hadn't put the families, the brave, heroic families of this tragic event through the roller coaster ride of the conspiracy theorists, and I don't know why he did it, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of the conspiracy theorists, there are a lot of them around, Mr. Kallstrom, as you know probably better than most. How do you--for instance, you just said categorically that the U.S. military was not involved. And you also work for the federal government. You're an official of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And the conspiracy theorists would say, oh, well, that's what Kallstrom's got to say. How in the world could he ever find out whether or not the U.S. Navy accidentally fired a missile or whatever? You are satisfied as an individual that this just did not happen, right?

JAMES KALLSTROM: I'm satisfied as an individual, an FBI agent, a patriot, a citizen, a human being, you know, someone with emotions that would never--never do anything like that. I mean, the notion that we would cover up something like that, that, you know, we would keep thousands of people quiet, is just so inconceivable to be--

JIM LEHRER: You couldn't do it? As a practical matter, you couldn't do it if you wanted to, is that what you're saying?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, the next day, when the chemical findings--to just give you an example--when we found the chemical traces, the next day it was in the New York Times, so we weren't very successful at keeping that too quiet.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Mechanical failure, is that where it's pointing at this, at this point, even though you may not have identified what kind of mechanical failure, is that where the preponderance of the evidence is pointing? Is that a fair statement?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, I think you know the fact that we have a large percent of the plane, and we don't see what we expect to see with a bomb or a missile certainly makes it less likely that it is a bomb or a missile but we need to hang in there for the full game here and make sure it's not in the last few pieces that we bring up. It would be not the right thing to do, to walk away from an investigation.

JIM LEHRER: There's another element that's been raised, is that this plane back in the 70's was owned and operated for one year by the Imperial Iranian Air Force and that during that same year, a similar 747 also owned by the Iranians exploded in midair, and that explosion was never explained. Have you all checked that possible connection out?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Yes, we have. This particular plane was on paper bought by Iran, however, it never left the United States, it never became in the custody of Iran, and never left the maintenance hangar at TWA or the maintenance contractor, so the Iranian government--no Iranian entity ever got their hands on this plane. It is true there was another plane that did blow up, and I don't know all the details of that circumstance, but that part of it I believe is true.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Kallstrom, finally, you and Mr. Francis became very familiar figures when this terrible tragedy happened four months ago, and as you say, four months and two days ago, and both of you--you in particular--came over as very optimistic, you know, that this thing was, in fact, going to be solved. Are you as optimistic now as you were when this thing first began?

JAMES KALLSTROM: I think so, Jim. You know, we need optimistic people in this line of business. If you hire a bunch of pessimists, we're not going to get too far in investigating the types of things we have to investigate. Are they easy, is everything solved in 30 minutes like it is on television, no. Some things take longer. Do the best works of professionals sometimes take a while, they do, but I am optimistic we will know, and we will be able to stand up and tell the American people definitively with certainty what happened to the airplane.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Kallstrom, thank you very much and good luck to you, sir.

JAMES KALLSTROM: Thank you, Jim. Semper fi.

JIM LEHRER: Same to you.

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