Special Report by Reid Collins

The Goblin on the Wing of Flight 990

In the wee small hours of the morning of Halloween a goblin was attached to the tragedy of Egypt Air's flight 990 that may haunt it forever. One network said it "had learned" and wire service reports carried the word that the plane had made a stop at Edwards Air Force Base after departing Los Angeles. None of the coifed and brow-lilting anchors seemed to find this bit of intelligence intriguing and for several hours of nauseating "breaking news" this stop-over was merely repeated as a factoid of the tragedy. No one seen here stopped in mid-brow-lift to note that a regularly scheduled commercial flight landing at a secured base where the latest in Air Force and NASA developed craft are tested would be a singular event, demanding immediate and full inquiry. Finally, however, the Edwards unscheduled stop was excised from the coverage as a "mistake." No explanation.

But for the conspiracists, the Edwards stop story was and is a bonanza. With the tragedy of TWA 800's demise still wrapped in an enigma, with JFK Jr.'s mysterious plunge into essentially the same waters wanting final explanation, the simple expungement of the Edwards landing from the 990 copy cannot be enough.

What is needed is what the media never does: autopsy the story. Backtrack to the original point. There is a source. A report of a commercial 767's unscheduled landing at a base where the other craft have "X" as a pre-fix (if any designation at all) does not produce itself. A living person originated that unfact, perhaps an innocent trying to pretend he knew why the flight was late out of LAX, but not likely. Too imaginative for your average flak. A network with regard for its own integrity would busy itself the moment the "braking news" banner came down with ferreting out the singular fact: who told us what and why?

A wire service mindful of its history would quietly re-check through its desks, foreign and domestic, to discover the source. And then, each would tell the world. Not only that it was an untruth but also that the untruth came about thusly. And a shovel's worth of conspiracy fodder would be removed from a world whose garden of truth gets more weed-infested every day.

Reid Collins was a reporter for CBS and CNN.

Courtesy of "American Spectator Magazine"