A Postmortem on the TWA Crash

A woman strolls the sands of East Moriches, looking wistfully out to sea. The ocean is hoarding its information, loath to yield answers or even clues. Her loved ones have not yet been found and she waits anxiously for the upcoming press conference.

Behind her, photographers cover the beach, swarming around like locusts waiting to devour the next crop of tearful moments. The governor has come to town, and rumor has it that the president may be here soon as well.

Through the cable news networks, everyone has come to Long Island, rivaled only by Atlanta in attracting the world's attention.

Day after day, a different sort of olympic heroism take place in East Moriches. Divers pursue bodies, not records, and rescue efforts take their toll not only on the families of the deceased, but the dedicated workers trying to put the pieces of this tragedy together.

Three possibilities loom in the background. Either the plane went down by mechanical failure, by a bomb or, less likely, by a missile attack. If in fact TWA Flight 800 fell under its own weight because of metal fatigue or faulty engineering, then my father has it right: you'd be crazy ever to fly again. But this seems unlikely. 747s don't just plummet into the sea in a ball of flame because of technical flaws. Aviation is not a perfect science, but almost all crashes are attributable to some problem not intrinsic to the airplane.

The missile theory has been largely discredited. Several spectators said they saw a red streak approach the plane before it burst into flames, sparking concern that something like a Katyusha rocket had been fired at the jet. Investigators have shown, however, that an explosion from a bomb could produce the optical illusion of such an attack as gas poured out of the pressurized cabin.

That leaves us with the haunting spectre of a bomb planted by terrorists. The world, and the United States for that matter, has seen the worst spate of terrorist activity in history, just in the last few years. The bombings at the World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City shocked a country used to thinking of terrorism as a Middle Eastern phenomenon which occasionally makes a detour through Europe. Now we have a replay of Pan Am 103 on our own coastline. If a bomb was responsible, we can safely say that terrorism has been imported to the United States, and where it will stop, nobody knows. This week, President Clinton unveiled a new package of security measures for the nation's airports intended to protect our passengers and restore peace of mind. But as we have seen, little can be done to stop a determined attacker, particularly one willing to give his own life for the cause.

Even more frightening is the idea that this was not the handiwork of an established group. Any major terrorist organization would have claimed credit by now, cashing in the political chips they bought with other people's lives. There is a twisted sense of comfort in fingering an established suspect. You feel as if you can deal with them, kill them, contain them, do whatever it takes to stop the violence. But at least you have that precious commodity, so elusive in terrorist attacks: a sense of control.

The more likely suspect in this case, however, is some lone mad person, like the Unabomer or some renegade rebels from overseas. These people are beyond control. They may have some token demands, but above all, they are about irrational hate. We can incarcerate them, prosecute them, bomb their native country, and we accomplish nothing. We can attack the symptoms, perhaps, but we have no cure for the disease.

Modern technology is such that these sick individuals are catapulted to power with a little gunpowder and some simple ingredients. There are books on the market, often purchased by children, detailing the construction of simple explosives, like the amateur pipe bomb recently found in LaGuardia airport. There is no escaping these realities; the work of our own hands has come back to haunt us.

Will we ever get a reprieve from this pain, from this madness? One must hope. I try to tell my sister that more people die in cars than in planes and that she shouldn't be scared to fly to Chicago next month to visit relatives. But I don't sound very convincing. The violence is too real, too omnipresent, too simple.

The blast will fade into the background and life will return to normal. Memorials will be held, bodies will eventually float to the surface and relatives will bury their dead. For now, all that remains are the quiet whispers of the waves, lapping up against the shore.