My mother and father, along with most of the other passengers on board, were buried in a watery grave near Tuskar Rock, about seven miles off the southeastern Irish coast. The plane was en route from Cork to London. There were no survivors–only 14 bodies were recovered. The passengers were largely Irish and British; my parents were the only Americans on board. For 30 years, many of us have known the disquietude that comes when family members vanish for no reason and there are no bodies to put in the ground, no way to say the proper prayer or final goodbye.
This year, however, the annual accounts featured headlines with more accusatory tones: british say missiles didn’t have range to hit aircraft and tuskar crash file shredded. In Ireland there is a 30-year waiting period before government documents are released. So this year began with the expectation that the government would make public files relating to the tragedy. When documents weren’t released, the action fueled longstanding suspicions that the government had something to hide.
For years there has been speculation that the plane was accidentally downed by a British missile. The Irish Ministry of Transport and Power official report issued in 1970 generated nagging questions. The report concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to reach any conclusion about why the plane crashed, but it suggested that another airborne object could have been in the vicinity. “No aeroplanes have been reported missing, but there remains the possibility that an unmanned aircraft, either a drone target aircraft or a missile might have been there.” At the time, frequent missile test firings took place over the Irish Sea, and many speculated that a testing site in Aberporth, Wales, was involved. For years the British have issued denials, saying the testing range was closed that day, a Sunday.
But this January, not only did the Irish government fail to release documents but the refusal was accompanied by an account in the Irish Independent that the British had shredded a key crash file in 1994. Equally confounding news also surfaced that Aer Lingus had no written report on the crash, the worst air disaster in the company’s history.
So why don’t the Irish release 30-year-old documents? John Lumsden, a spokes- person for Ireland’s Department of Public Enterprise, told me recently that relatives may be confused. Since the official report was released in 1970, the documents will be released 30 years from that date, not the crash year, 1968. Hence the public shouldn’t expect files released until 2001. Lumsden added, however, that relatives can make arrangements to see files beforehand.
Amid Kafkaesque quagmires, glimmers of hope emerged. By the end of January, a panel of representatives from Ireland’s Department of Public Enterprise and Britain’s Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions had been set up to conduct an official review of crash evidence. But as a post-Watergate American, I have to ask: are there any documents left to review?
For years relatives have looked for answers independently. My family has written to senators and ambassadors. I have met with Irish accident investigators and fishermen involved in salvage operations. In 1977, on the advice of attorneys, my two brothers and I hired an American private investigator, Tim Hooper, an elusive fellow who claimed he had worked in intelligence in Vietnam. Hooper presented us with alleged communiques from British and U.S. intelligence stating that the British had mistakenly shot down the plane with a surface-to-air missile, then engaged in a cover-up. But after months of gathering information, Hooper vanished. One of our attorneys received a call from Hooper stating that he had entered a federal witness-protection program and in exchange for information, the FBI gave him a new identity and home.
I passed Hooper’s communiques to other relatives, and one of them gave the papers to the Irish press, a move that fanned the January media blitz. All through 1998, Irish members of the Tuskar Air Crash Relatives Group pressed for a public inquiry into the crash, and ultimately they are responsible for bringing new attention to an old mystery. Families came together for the first time in March 1998, for a 30th-anniversary mass for victims’ relatives at North Cathedral in Cork. We found out that there were still plenty of us who wanted to know the truth about what happened to our mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers–and we are not going away.
