FBI Takes Lead In Crash Probe -- Apparent Prayer On Tape Raises Suspicions

WASHINGTON - The FBI today took charge of the EgyptAir Flight 990 crash investigation, administration sources say, because new information from the jet's cockpit voice recorder indicates a pilot may have intentionally brought the plane down.

The National Transportation Safety Board made the final decision to turn responsibility for the investigation over to the FBI after another, thorough examination of the recording, a board official said.

Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh met early this morning to map out the investigation that "for all intents and purposes" has shifted from a mechanical matter to a criminal probe, a senior government official said.

According to officials familiar with the tape's contents, a crew member apparently had left the flight deck when a remaining crew member said what could be a prayer - perhaps before the 767-300ER, with 217 people aboard, was pushed into a high-speed dive over the Atlantic Ocean.

The absent crew member reportedly returned to the cockpit. A safety board official said yesterday that investigators suspect the two then began "working at cross purposes."

Said a law-enforcement official yesterday: "If we do take it over, there will be a heavy emphasis on the co-pilot."

The first official sign that the Oct. 31 tragedy might be of criminal origin came yesterday, when National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall said his agency's NTSB's authority in the case was in question.

The FBI has been an active if quiet participant all along. Its jurisdiction over a crash in international waters is unclear. Egypt had asked the United States immediately after the crash to conduct the investigation.

Comparing the chronicle of events on the jet's voice tape to detailed information on the flight-data recorder is crucial to determining criminal involvement, sources said. For example, whether the prayer was uttered before or after the autopilot was disconnected could be significant.

Hall said investigators are "trying to refine the correlation between the two recorders."

Both human and mechanical causes had been considered previously. As recently as Sunday, some sources said the voice tape indicated the crew was dealing with an undetermined technical issue. But that was after only a few hours of analysis. The cockpit voice recorder was recovered from the ocean late Saturday.

Sources last night said that only the NTSB, Egyptian authorities and the FBI had listened to the cockpit recording.

Members of the investigation's designated cockpit-voice-recorder group had been scheduled to participate in the analysis yesterday. The committee includes the Federal Aviation Administration and the manufacturers of the plane and its engines - Boeing and Pratt & Whitney.

A senior NTSB official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators have had difficulty understanding the meaning of some of the crew's comments. Egyptians and American-designated interpreters are participating in the translation from Arabic.

"As painstaking a process as it is to read out cockpit voice recorders, this one is made more difficult by the fact that it is almost entirely in a foreign language," Hall said. "To help us expedite this process, we added more translating and interpreting resources to the task."

It's possible there is a dispute over what the crew is saying on the tape. That's not uncommon, even when the language is English. In this case, except for communication with air-traffic controllers, the conversations are in Arabic, which, like English, can be idiomatic.

Flight 990 was en route from New York to Cairo, cruising at 33,000 feet about 60 miles south of Massachusetts, when the autopilot was disconnected. Eight seconds later, the plane's throttles were retarded and the plane was pushed into a 40-degree dive that quickly exceeded recommended maximum speed.

Nearing the sound barrier, the plane's engines were shut down just before the plane pulled out of the dive at about 16,000 feet. Around that time, the elevators on the horizontal stabilizer, which control the plane's up and down direction, were "split," or deflected in opposite directions, which could indicate the two pilots were working against each other.

The aircraft then climbed to 24,000 feet before its final plunge.

If indeed the EgyptAir crash is determined to be of criminal origin, it would be the second 767 crash caused by human intervention - out of only three 767 crashes ever.

In 1996, an Ethiopian Airlines 767-200ER was hijacked in Africa. The plane ran out of fuel near the Comoros Islands and ditched near a beach, killing 132 people.

The only other 767 crash was that of a 300ER model in Thailand in 1991, which killed 223 people. The Lauda Air plane dived into the jungle after one thrust reverser deployed in flight.

Chuck Taylor's phone-message number is 206-464-2465. His e-mail address is: chucktaylor@seattletimes.com.