`BLINK,' LIKE TWA FLIGHT 800 PROBE, FALLS SHORT.

Byline: Scott Holleran Special to the Daily News

``In the Blink of an Eye: The Inside Story of the FBI's Investigation of TWA Flight 800''

by Pat Milton

(368 pages, Random House; $26.95)

Our rating: Two stars

When TWA Flight 800 broke apart over Long Island's waters three years ago, it became an unsettling emblem of our times. The event bore the mark of terrorism. Rumors of a government conspiracy spread quickly. It had the Internet, the missile theory and, at its center, a sturdy authority named James Kallstrom.

Associated Press reporter Pat Milton's ``In the Blink of an Eye: The Inside Story of the FBI's Investigation of TWA Flight 800,'' is Kallstrom's story played as a real-life John Wayne movie. Milton sheds light on what she properly calls ``the greatest mystery in aviation history,'' but she leaves a trail of unanswered questions. Tenderly improvising Kallstrom's thoughts, Milton re-creates his tough demeanor. Newly revealed facts are scattered here and there, though most are inconsequential, but Jim Kallstrom is the real focus; he is Milton's tragic hero.

There's one problem: Kallstrom's heroism is dubious. Leading a mammoth investigation with unprecedented resources and unlimited authority, he ultimately failed to achieve his goal: determining the cause of the crash. Instead of establishing a standard, Milton presents the investigation as an end in itself. She portrays an exemplary operation that, despite heroic efforts, produced not one shred of conclusive evidence. If this investigation was the ideal, America's air passengers have plenty of cause for concern.

The FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board hovered in Long Island for weeks while bodies and wreckage remained unrecovered and passengers' families languished in pain while awaiting word of precisely who was on the plane. While it may be tempting to blame TWA for the long delay - and the airline's stiff response was inexcusable - it was the FBI that seized the passenger manifest almost immediately, as Milton recognizes.

Occasionally, her reliance on the FBI leads to sloppy work: Milton did not even interview aerospace specialist Dr. Dennis Shanahan, the investigation's most important physician, whom she mistakenly identifies as a forensic pathologist, which he is not.

The missile theory is handled poorly; Milton makes no reference to the FBI's curious insistence that a defense manufacturer of drones used for military exercises evaluate pieces of unidentified wreckage, an especially peculiar summons considering that the FBI's request came after Kallstrom ridiculed - and ruled out - the friendly fire theory. Milton never mentions that a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, Vernon Grose, publicly expressed grave doubts about the investigation after observing a missile theory proponent's analysis of the flight data recorder.

And Milton scarcely mentions an unidentified radar track that is consistent with a boat moving at 30 knots directly beneath TWA 800 when it was destroyed; the plane blows up and the radar track, alarmingly, keeps moving out to sea. Why not ask Kallstrom why this radar track was ignored?

That a seasoned journalist writing the ``inside story of the FBI investigation into TWA Flight 800'' leaves crucial details unexplored and offers inaccurate information underscores the folly of Flight 800 and renders ``Blink'' as incomplete as the investigation. The FBI, NTSB, Navy divers and hundreds of others may have worked diligently to solve the mystery - though ``Blink'' reports many jaw-dropping instances when they do not - but hard work is not the sole measure of heroism.

Kallstrom - with whom Milton is promoting ``In the Blink of an Eye'' - eventually suspended but did not close the criminal investigation of the crash, quit the FBI and accepted an executive position with a credit card company. Clearly, he's satisfied with the investigation's mixed conclusion that a crime ``probably'' was not involved in the worst aviation disaster in American history. A complete examination of the crash, and why the FBI failed to define it, may never be written, but Milton's adoring plea that investigators really tried is hardly an acceptable answer.

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Photo: no caption (Book cover - In the Blink of an Eye: The Inside Story of the FBI's Investigation of TWA Flight 800)