Why There's No James Kallstrom To Manage This Crisis
The other day, I mentioned James Kallstrom, the FBI manager who quickly became the face of the investigation into the July 17, 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800. He represents a textbook execution of crisis management: at first, there were equal competing theories of the disaster, ranging from a terrorist bomb to a misfired US antiaircraft missile. Kallstrom was able to establish himself as a credible central figure who made information available no matter which way it led, and by making himself the best single source, he was able to establish the consensus that the explosion was the result of combustible vapor in a fuel tank, ignited by an electrical short circuit. As a result, other competing theories remain at the fringe. While TWA 800 was unquestionably a corporate crisis for TWA, which had already declared bankruptcy the year before, it was also a crisis, and probably a bigger one, for the FBI, whose credibility had been badly damaged by the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1992 and...