Exclusive | Egyptian terror group claimed responsibility for downing TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996, new FBI records reveal

A terror group from Egypt told the FBI it was responsible for downing TWA Flight 800 and killing all 230 people aboard, according to newly surfaced FBI records featured in a new documentary marking the 30th anniversary of the tragedy.An explosive claim buried in a trove of newly obtained Freedom of Information Act documents is reviving decades-old questions about whether a missile or bomb brought down the Boeing 747-100 off Long Island on July 17, 1996.Among the records obtained by the transparency nonprofit Judicial Watch is a New York teletype dated two days after the crash, case file 265A-NY-259028: “FBI headquarters received faxes generated from Cairo claiming credit for the destruction of the aircraft,” the cable states.The document does not name the terror group or otherwise provide an assessment by investigators at the time of the veracity of its claim to have brought down the jet.A 14-month FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force probe, along with a four-year National Transportation Safety Board investigation, ultimately rejected that theory.But it’s existence is prompting a series of questions from Judicial Watch, which filed suit in federal court this week against the NTSB to get more information and whose findings will be featured in a new 45-minute documentary, “Judicial Watch Investigates TWA 800 – 30 Years Later,” which debuts Saturday on YouTube.“Let’s see the faxes.

Did you pursue it? To what degree?  Was it a fraudster? Was it legitimate?” asked the group’s chief investigator, Chris Farrell, who has spent years trying to untangle the evidence.“That’s pretty alarming considering there was a massive effort to swat that theory down back in ‘96,” he added.“Cairo at that point was a hotbed for all kinds of militant Islamist supremacists.”TWA Flight 800 departed JFK International Airport in New York at 8:19 p.m., bound for Paris, and blew up 12 minutes after take off over the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York.

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