Gander Different Crash, Same Questions

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FLYING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS IN 1985, three years before the Pan Am bombing, 248 American soldiers and eight crew members died when their chartered DC-8 jet plunged to earth just after taking off from a refueling stop in Gander, Newfoundland. It was the worst U.S. military air disaster ever. Icing of the wings was immediately suggested as the cause, although Islamic Jihad terrorists just as quickly boasted of blowing up the jet.

It wasn't until 1989 that an Iran-contra connection to the tragedy was revealed. Arrow Air, the charter company, turned out to be one of Lieut. Colonel Oliver North's regular arms shippers. Although most of the crash victims belonged to the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, returning from six months' duty with the multinational peacekeeping force in the Sinai, more than 20 Special Forces personnel trained for counterterrorist missions were also on board. Suspicions have recently deepened that they, like Charles McKee and the members of his hostage-rescue team on Pan Am Flight 103, were the target of an attack.

^ Both the U.S. and Canadian governments seemed determined to literally bury any evidence that might point to such a conclusion. Major General John Crosby, then the U.S. Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel, arrived in Gander within hours of the tragedy. He was quoted by the Arrow Air maintenance chief as wanting to "bulldoze over the crash site immediately," although Crosby has denied it. Just as quickly, White House spokesman Larry Speakes assured the world there was "no evidence of sabotage or an explosion in flight."

In 1988, after interminable foot dragging and infighting, the nine-member Canadian Aviation Safety Board issued a split verdict. Five attributed the crash to ice formation and not to an explosion. But four, including two aeronautical engineers, disagreed so vociferously that a former Canadian supreme court justice was appointed to see if a new investigation should be opened. The evidence, wrote Justice Willard Estey, "does not support ice contamination." Nevertheless, he advised that further probing would be unfair to the victims' families. "It's for their sake that the case should be reopened," counters George Baker, the Liberal Party Member of Parliament from Gander, who lives one mile (1.6 km) from the crash site.

A new book titled Improbable Cause, written by Les Filotas, one of the dissenting air-safety board members, promises on its cover to expose the "deceit and dissent in the investigation." Filotas does that with a devastating accumulation of evidence spanning 553 pages. "Many of the experts involved in the investigation," says Filotas, "didn't realize they were participating in a cover-up."

Even sharper accusations are being leveled by M. Gene Wheaton, the private investigator appointed by the Families for Truth about Gander, Inc. The organization was founded in 1989 by Dr. J.D. Phillips and his wife Zona of St. Petersburg, Florida. As father and stepmother of one of the victims, they charged the U.S. with "failing to conduct a full inquest, or even revealing the facts it does possess."