The inquiry
results, that don't leave any doubt about how the disaster occurred, have been
published during the television program Panorama broadcasted on the first channel
of British BBC at 8,30 p.m. of Monday July
26th. Tom Mangold, the journalist who made the program, has developed the story
in all its details explaining those 
aspects
that Italian public opinion has never known.As a matter of fact, while in England there are no doubt about how the DC-9 exploded, in Italy inquiries opened by the magistracy and the department of Interior are still far from solution. Judge Giorgio Santacroce and Carlo Luzzati, chairman of the Alghero Airport, both in charge of the two inquiries, like to talk about their conclusions only when investigations will be at the final step. Until then, let see what are so far the foreign experts conclusions.
First of all we know that few months ago Luzzati went to the prestigious Rarde (the real institute for research and development of weapon systems) in London asking for examination of some rivet heads took out from the jet seats and passengers bodies. Since the DC-9 fuselage was riveting from inside, it's clear that rivets had been throwing against people in the nacelle because of an explosion outside the plane. Besides Luzzati asked to the British experts to examine even some piece of metal took out from passengers bodies that for sure didn't belong to the plane. Italian technicians found out more evidence that leave out
the bomb hypothesis. Inside the plane
seats they found some piece of plastic coming from the area reserved for the
crew, just behind the cabin. That's the point where explosion occurred, so in
a place where hardly a terrorist could put an explosive device. But there is
something else. By Douglas Higgs, the Rarde head, a small piece of crystal found
in a body shows up that explosion occurred for sure outside the plane because
that crystal belonged to the protection plane inside one of the window and it
blew up in the direction of passengers.But the most astonishing news came up when Luzzati and his staff went to Washington to examine tapes recorded by airfield control radar in Rome some minutes before and some minutes after the DC-9 disaster. The Us Department of Civil Aviation gave all tapes to engineer John Macidul. What Mr. Macidul found destroyed the already weak hypothesis of the bomb and instead confirmed that explosion has been produced by something else. The American expert found three different radar tracks near DC-9. The first one shows up behind and at the right side of the plane one minute and 34 seconds before the explosion; the second comes up after 29 seconds and at only 15 miles from the plane; the third instead shows up 12 seconds after explosion, about 5 miles and an half on the right side of DC-9. Macidul, who is also a previous Usaf fighter pilot, didn't have any doubt and wrote down that those radar tracks are the motions of a single flying object. In his official report Macidul concluded: " A not identified object crossed
the incident area from west to
east at very high speed and about at the same time of the accident. The plane
and the not identified object (that was at the west side of the accident area)
was coming out from the sun and it was flying in the direction of the plane
which was in front of the sun, in direction of the object".By these information, Macidul didn't hesitate to confirm that the "not identified object" quoted in his report was just a modern fighter plane without a precise identity. Nato Force, to avoid any possible charge, denied any military manoeuvres in the airspace and at the moment when DC-9 exploded. By the way there would be no need to defence if the unknown jet was by chance near the plane. At this point remain only one possible hypothesis: an intentional attack with the precise will to shut down the line plane.
Is it possible that an enormity of this kind could be occurred? The question has been forwarded to John Transue, previous head of the air field
of the American Department of Defence and actually counsellor of the Pentagon.
By all the radar information he got (height, speed, relevant distance, a missile
speed, optimum ray of fire) Transue reached to these easy conclusions:1) The not identified object has all the features of a modern fighter jet.
2) Its method of approach to DC-9 is a clear attack manoeuvre.
3) When the fighter was near DC-9 it threw a missile that hit the right side of the plane.
4) The attack was intentional. This kind of missile air-to-air are radar controlled. When one gets going, pilot must hits the centre of the target by his radar and follow the missile until it gets the enemy plane. To do this, a pilot is busy for all missile fly, and this means from 30 to 40 seconds. Of course an operation like this remove any hypothesis of incident.
At this point we have two questions: who is the author of an atrocity like that? And why the Italian government, knowing all that, has always been silent? To the first question it's not easy to answer. In the inquiry there is a mention to a possible act of Libyan terrorism, even if Gheddafi carefully denied all accusing voices.
As for the Italian government silence, old or new it can be, there are no excuse. Even now taking a long time for a very disagreeable inquiry it looks like the government is trying to cover up the inexplicable murder of 81 people.
