But what about the greys? Who has been keeping a wary eyeball on those high-flying, counterculture subversives? Folk who spend a lot of time on the Internet, that's who. Earlier this month, when we heard about those eyewitness accounts reporting a streak of light heading toward TWA Flight 800 seconds before the jet exploded, we knew what we had to do: Fire up the Deja News Web search engine and enter the keywords TWA and UFO. We weren't disappointed. Seconds later, dozens of off-the-top-of-my-head speculations were streaming into the cubicle we lease from the good people at the Parallax Corporation.

Like high and low-pressure weather fronts colliding, whenever scant facts meet anomalous events, conspiracy theories are sure to form a noisy thunderhead. The latest Usenet speculation about trigger-happy saucer jockeys downing the TWA 747 isn't much more than that--noisy speculation. Several Internauts have noted the TWA's history of UFO encounters, suggesting that irate aliens--tired of all that blue ice dinging their shiny cupolas, perhaps, or just sick of roasted peanuts?--have it in for Trans World Airways.

Another theory floated to explain the eyewitness accounts of a streak of light preceding the explosion is much more troubling: Could the object seen by more than one observer have been a missile? The altitude of the TWA 800 would have put the jet beyond the range of a hand-launched projectile, which means that in order for the missile theory to fly, we have to start thinking in terms of air-to-air missiles, or heavy-duty surface-to-air missiles. Either way, the uncomfortable issue of friendly fire rears its head. Which brings us to another source of speculation about the TWA explosion, one that the FBI--at last report--hadn't yet ruled out: Might the U.S. military have blasted the jet out of the sky, inadvertently (or, if you're feeling particularly paranoid at this moment--not so inadvertently). Theorists with lots of spare time to post opinions on the Internet have already begun to speculate that a patented government coverup job is already underway to obscure the friendly fire scenario.

Of course, in the absence of compelling evidence, to suggest that such is the case is about as responsible as saying that ET shot the plane down. (Another tasteless theory that we haven't yet heard elsewhere, but which we will now toss Bacos-like into the paranoid salad goes like this: Alarmed that the Olympic fever was cutting into box-office revenues, the producers of the smash summer hit Independence Day decided to launch an old-fashioned publicity stunt--hey, they blew up airplanes in the movie--to keep the magic alive. Or maybe actual aliens themselves decided a little show of interstellar authority might impress those who found it hard to swallow the premise of ID4--Bill Pullman as president, come on!)

At this point (past our bedtime on a sweltering Sunday night), the scenario getting the most press conference quality time from FBI spokespersons is that a terrorist bomb planted in the foreward cargo hold ripped the nose off the plane and dragged the Flight 800 into the Atlantic. Lots of speculative hype from the more responsible national media is swirling around the possible involvement of (take your pick) a) some nutball American militia group or b) some nutball Middle Eastern terrorist outfit. Either scenario seems plausible at this point, but, again, there's no point in choosing until a modicum of evidence arrives.

Just don't try to ease your mind by getting lost in Olympic fever. You might just catch some shrapnel from a poorly made pipe bomb planted under the NBC tower in Olympic Park. Again, early media speculation of the we-don't-really-know-anything-but-we'll-sound-authoritative-anyway variety has invoked both the militias and foreign terrorists. The fact that the homemade warhead in this instance was an easily constructed pipe bomb (or bombs) suggests a workbench tinkerer. Take your pick of suspects: dispeptic patriot or conspiracy of dipeptic patriots, or the usual lone nuts: Unabomber2 or some touched Travis Bickle character.

But there's another theory sure to take the Internet by storm: What if the terror of '96 is government-sanctioned? Remember when we were asking if this was 1972? Well, as we pointed out in the book with the same name as this Web site, conspiracy theorist doyene Mae Brussell believed that the domestic terror blamed on the left during the early 1970s was actually a big government provocation to justify a crackdown on long-hairs and war protesters. Cinque was working for The Man. But don't bolt the bomb shelter and crack open those stale saltines just yet. We're just engaging in idle Internet speculation here. There's no evidence that the ol' '70s Police State is back in action. Then again, why the hell are the Who and the Sex Pistols reuniting? And there's another Brady Bunch movie on the way....