Time: Fri Dec 05 14:23:00 1997
To:
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Ron Brown's Mysterious Death - Assassination & Cover-Up? (fwd)
Cc:
Bcc: sls, friends
References:
<snip>
>
> At about the same time, a conservative legal group, Judicial
> Watch, was investigating the possibly illegal ties of Brown and
> his Commerce Department to DNC fund-raising efforts. Using a
> Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Judicial Watch focused on
> Commerce's overseas trade missions and whether participants were
> selected because they had been major donors to the DNC. Judicial
> Watch had already identified John Huang, a Commerce official and
> former DNC fund-raiser, as a target of its suit.
>
> Huang had also been APAC's major fund-raiser and was president
> of the Lippo Group USA, the American arm of the now-famous
> Indonesian firm headed by Mochtar Riady. Lippo has had
> longstanding ties to Bill Clinton and alleged links to the fund-
> raising scandal and the Chinese government. As part of its suit,
> Judicial Watch had taken a deposition from Huang and was
> preparing to take a deposition from Brown.
>
> Another curious figure was Melinda Yee of APAC, who became
> Brown's personal assistant at Commerce. Months later, after the
> 1996 election had passed, new scrutiny by Congress and the media
> would place some of these individuals - including Huang, Yee and
> the Lums - and groups like APAC at the center of a massive,
> perhaps illicit, fund-raising effort by the Clinton-Gore
> campaign.
>
> But as of April 3, 1996, these matters had received little
> public or press attention, and Brown's death appeared to make
> them irrelevant. Six hours after the official confirmation of
> Brown's demise, Pearson quietly announced he was closing his
> probe of Brown.
>
> THE CRASH
>
> According to Nolanda Hill, originally Brown was not scheduled to
> head up the trade mission to the Balkans that ended in his
> death. She says at the last minute - after Pearson's subpoenas
> were issued - the White House asked Brown to join the
> delegation.
>
> Given the later questions about DNC fund raising, his own
> involvement in that effort, and the timing of his death as the
> Pearson inquiry was getting into gear, it may have been
> inevitable that questions would be raised about the plane crash
> itself.
>
> Hill herself has alleged, with no real basis other than
> suspicion, that Brown's plane crash was no accident. Her
> suspicion may also have something to do with the fact that
> Brown's death left her holding the bag. Pearson's investigation
> of her was turned over to the Justice Department, where that
> inquiry continues today. Hill has also alleged that when she was
> first informed of Brown's death, an Army undersecretary told her
> Brown's plane had crashed in the Adriatic and Navy divers were
> already on the scene.
>
> Confusion often reigns when disaster strikes, and later becomes
> the fodder of conspiracy mills. But legitimate questions about
> the crash remain outstanding. According to the official Air
> Force report on the Brown crash - which totals more than 17,000
> pages bound in 22 volumes - the government identified three
> causes.
>
> First, a paperwork foul-up had not alerted Air Force personnel
> that the Dubrovnik airport and its approaches had never been
> certified as safe by the Air Force. Second, the approach to
> Runway 12, the one assigned to the Brown plane for landing, had
> not been designed properly by the Croatians. And third,
> according to the Air Force, gross pilot error contributed to the
> crash. The plane's pilots flew on a heading some 10 degrees to
> the left of their proper course, driving the jet directly into
> the side of a nearby mountain, St. John's Hill. The Air Force
> report suggested the pilots likely used improper timing methods
> to aid navigation and were coordinating their course based on
> the wrong ground navigation beacon.
>
> The pilot of the Brown plane was an "evaluator pilot" for the
> type of aircraft that crashed, the most senior pilot flying that
> type of plane in the squadron. He had accumulated nearly 3,000
> flight hours, and his co-pilot had even more time flying the
> same plane. Despite the voluminous Air Force report, critics of
> the investigation have suggested that the inquiry was
> compromised from the beginning because investigators began with
> the assumption the crash was simply an accident.
>
> On the day of the crash, and though American rescuers and
> investigators were hours if not days from the scene, spokesmen
> at the White House and Pentagon ruled out hostile fire - though
> the region had been the center of a military conflict of long
> duration. Almost all initial press reports referred to terrible
> weather the Brown plane encountered, implying that might have
> been a cause.
>
> One day after the crash, with no real investigation under way,
> Secretary of Defense William Perry told the AP that the Brown
> crash was "a classic sort of accident that good instrumentation
> should be able to prevent." These initial statements from
> politicians carried over to the first phase of the Air Force
> inquiry, which is supposed to treat every military plane crash
> as suspicious until the investigation is completed.
>
> Air Force procedure calls for a two-step investigation. The
> first inquiry is called a safety board, which convenes to
> determine if the plane crashed as a result of accident, hostile
> fire, sabotage, mechanical failure or some other cause. The
> safety board is nonpunitive and secret. It exists not to assign
> guilt or suggest punishment, but to gather all the relevant
> details, evidence and testimony from those involved in the crash
> - to determine why the plane crashed. Information gathered in
> this phase can't be used in court, which encourages personnel to
> come forward to admit mistakes.
>
> The second step, according to Air Force regulations, is the
> convening of an accident/legal investigation, which does assign
> guilt and exists largely to find out what happened during the
> crash and its aftermath for legal proceedings. Because of its
> limited scope, this part of the inquiry can be more stunted in
> finding the true causes of a specific crash. In Brown's case,
> the Air Force decided to suspend normal procedures and skipped
> the use of the primary safety board investigation. The second
> part of the inquiry, the accident/legal investigation, began
> immediately after the crash.
>
> According to the Air Force, the only other instance in recent
> memory when the safety board was skipped followed the crash of
> two Army Blackhawk helicopters in Iraq in the wake of the Gulf
> War. In essence, the Air Force assumed the crash was an accident
> from the beginning.
>
> Air Force spokesman Maj. Ed Worley said the safety board was
> skipped because of its secret nature and because the Air Force
> wanted to make "full public disclosure as soon as possible" to
> the public and Congress. "This was an odd case," Worley
> explained. "We were flying the secretary of commerce, and a
> decision was made early on that for the public interest we would
> conduct an accident, not a safety board. That was our overriding
> concern and we were not overlooking something."
>
> OTHER ISSUES
>
> A number of other unusual facts and anomalies regarding the
> crash have emerged since issuance of the Air Force's report:
>
> *The weather. Initial press reports stated the Brown plane
> attempted to land in extremely poor weather, including heavy
> rains, winds and lightning. Newsweek magazine reported that it
> was "the worst storm in 10 years." Time magazine reported "the
> worst storm in a decade was raging." Even Hillary Clinton wrote
> in her weekly column that the plane crashed "in a violent
> rainstorm." Yet the Air Force investigation report concluded
> "the weather was not a substantially contributing factor to this
> mishap." Why was the Air Force so sure? Simple. There was no
> major storm.
>
> According to the report, the weather conditions broadcast by the
> control tower were basically good: winds were at 14 mph, with
> only a light to moderate rain. Less than 50 minutes before the
> Brown plane crashed, an executive jet carrying U.S. Ambassador
> Peter Galbraith and the premier of Croatia landed at the same
> airport. The pilot of that plane later said, "I was sure they
> would land."
>
> The only possible hindrance to landing was scattered cloud cover
> at 500 feet and solid cloud cover at 2,000 feet. Since Dubrovnik
> airport sits between the Adriatic on one side and a mountain
> range on another, clouds frequently blanket the mountainside,
> making an instrument approach a necessity.
>
> *Navigation aids. Brown's plane was probably relying on Croatian
> ground beacons for navigation. In the minutes before Brown's
> plane crashed, five other planes landed at Dubrovnik without
> difficulty, and none experienced problems with the beacons.
>
> But additional questions about the beacons and the crash will
> remain unanswered because, as the Air Force acknowledges,
> airport maintenance chief Niko Junic died by gunshot just three
> days after the crash and before he could be interviewed by
> investigators. Within a day of his death, officials determined
> the death was a suicide. The New York Times reported the 46-
> year-old Junic was "despondent over a failed romance."
>
> A related curious matter was the Air Force report's revelation
> that a backup portable navigation beacon, formerly stored at the
> airport, had been stolen before the crash and has never been
> recovered. Conspiracy buffs have suggested Brown's plane may
> have been a victim of "spoofing" - aviation slang for what
> happens when a spurious navigation beacon is used to trick a
> pilot to change course.
>
> *The survivor. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Shelley Kelly, a stewardess,
> survived the crash for some four hours. Kelly and another
> stewardess had been seated in a jumpseat at the very rear of the
> 737. That area was found basically intact after the crash.
> According to the Air Force, she received first aid from Croatian
> rescuers but died on the way to a nearby hospital. Her autopsy
> report states that Kelly died of a broken neck.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Ron Brown's 'accident': Confusion or Cover-up"
> http://www.serv.net/~mjenn/ronbr.html
> By Nick Guarino
>
>Ever since the crash, most reporters and officials have refused to
>even consider the possibility of foul play. Some of them are
>merely following orders. But most have instinctively fled from
>the highly disturbing possibility that Ron Brown was assassinated
>by people close to his own President. They are confronted with
>the brutal impossibility of two experienced pilots following a VOR
>beam into a mountain 1.6 miles of course. So they all shrug their
>shoulders in bewilderment. None of their theories have come even
>close to explaining how a beacon that is accurate to within two
>feet at the landing point could lead the plane so far astray. But
>they have tried: E The Air Force's official explanation is that
>the pilots set the compass on the airplane 10 degrees off course.
>That is absurd. Besides having an electric compass, the plane was
>also equipped with a magnetic compass. Pilots routinely set their
>compasses right before takeoff. If the compass was set off 10
>degrees, they could not have been on course when they passed the
>first beacon, 11.8 miles from the airport. Instead they would
>have been miles and miles off course at this point. To make this
>explanation even more absurd, the plane was flying on the VOR
>signal, not the compass. That explains the half-truth. Yes, the
>plane was flying 10 degrees off course, but it was because the VOR
>beam had been tampered with. E One desperate explanation was that
>a nasty cross wind blew" the plane sideways. Not credible. This
>wind would require a wind 90 degrees off the actual wind E Most of
>the press and officialdom have blamed poor visibility. To do
>this, they have taken the ferocity of the rainstorm later that
>afternoon and evening -- and moved it back in time to the crash
>hour. But records show the weather from 2:54 pm to 2:58 pm was
>simply not that bad. It was well above the minimum required for
>landing. And VHF beacons NEVER get blown off course by the wind.
>Pilot fatigue and strain? Not likely on a 45- minute flight.
>Equipment malfunction on a rickety old plane? IFOR-2l was the
>number two plane in the White House fleet -- in essence, Air Force
>2. It had carried Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Defense
>Secretary William Perry just the week before. Everything about
>the flight was checked-out and rehearsed a week in advance.
>Lightning or other troubles causing the pilots to lose track of
>the beam? No, they were both drilled in the standard procedure
>for Cilipi: if you lose the beam or miss the airport, you
>immediately veer TO THE RIGHT AND UP to make sure you avoid Sveti
>Ivan. Indisputably, the pilots thought they were following the
>beacon. Otherwise, they would have executed the standard right
>turn within seconds. Plus, their landing gear was locked down.
>They expected to land at any moment.
>
>In sum, none of the "official" explanations to date hold any
>water. And all of them ignore the glaring fact that IFOR-21 did
>not simply stray off path at the last moment. By all accounts, she
>went straight as an arrow to her doom, the moment she left the
>Kolocep Island beacon and picked up the Cilipi beacon. The problem
>had to be the Cilipi beacon, which was broadcast to cause the
>plane to fly 10 degrees too far north.
>
>And even worse
>
>Could the problem have been that technician Niko Jerkuic had let
>his equipment become run-down? No. Thousands of landings had taken
>place while his equipment was running. Some, just minutes before
>IFOR2. To transmit a VOR beacon that's ten degrees off, has got to
>be done intentionally. Yes, that VOR system is old and antiquated.
>But the fact is, millions of flights land successfully all around
>the U.S. every year, using the same old, antiquated equipment. A
>magnetic compass is old and antiquated. Columbus sailed to the new
>world with one. But to this day, every ship and plane in the world
>uses the same old, antiquated magnetic compass. They use them
>because they work.
>
>Obviously, this explanation could do double duty, by aiding the
>suicide theory. In this scenario, Jerkuic simply felt so bad about
>his shoddy work that he shot himself. Unfortunately for the
>theory, you can't just accidentally bump a knob and make the whole
>VOR apparatus line up planes with Sveti Ivan. It takes a sustained
>effort, from an expert technician.
>
>Plus, the same beacon had guided other planes safely onto the
>runway, just before IFOR-2 1. So Jerkuic had to have made his
>adjustment at the last minute. Alternative scenario: It is very
>possible -- and a bit simpler -- that Jerkuic simply shut his
>beacon down. At the same moment, a decoy beacon would have been
>turned on by a fellow operative sitting on Sveti Ivan. A decoy
>beacon easily fits in a jeep. This is an old, old trick.
>
>The question arises: could not the whole issue be resolved by a
>quick review of the tapes at the control tower? They probably
>could -- if the tapes had not suddenly disappeared. And couldn't
>the air traffic controller shed some light on things? Certainly.
>But now he, too, has "committed suicide" -- which, by the way, is
>a rare event for such a cause in Croatian culture I repeat: No
>official anywhere is facing these facts. As a result, their
>"explanations" are laced with words like "mysterious" and
>"unknown" and "inexplicably" and "unfortunate."
>
>Air Force investigation killed for the 1st time in history.
>
>The chief investigator for Pratt & Whitney happened to be at the
>Paris Air Show on April 3. Pratt & Whitney always sends an
>investigator when a plane powered by their engines has a mishap.
>So the man called his boss in America, and said in effect, "We
>just had a crash in Croatia. I think I'd better get down there."
>The response was "Go pack." But as the investigator was packing at
>his hotel, his boss called back. "DON'T go," he told the
>astonished employee. "There's not going to be a safety
>investigation." For the first time in its history, the Air Force
>had canceled the safety investigation of a crash on friendly soil.
>There would only be a quick token legal investigation, designed to
>enable a committee to blame the pilots and some Air Force brass,
>and go home.
>
>At this time, it's an open question whether the black boxes will
>play a role. Within hours after the crash, the Croatian Ministry
>of Transport announced they had the black boxes. One and a half
>days after the crash, Croatian TV (plus Russian and French TV)
>announced the FDR (flight data recorder) and the CVR (cockpit
>voice recorder) were safely in the hands of the U.S. Marines. They
>said that soon, "the cause of the crash will be assessed to find
>out what happened." The U.S. European command in Stuttgart,
>Germany,also stated that a black box was aboard. Later, the
>Pentagon brass stoutly denied all this. They said there were NO
>black boxes aboard. They claimed the actual recovered boxes were
>designed to hold soda pop and toilet paper. (In fact, the black
>boxes are painted bright orange, so investigators can more easily
>find and identify them. The Croats, who feel they can tell a reel
>of tape from a roll of toilet paper, are keeping mum.) It is hard
>to imagine that America's #2 VIP plane had no black box. And a
>veteran Air Force mechanic, who claims to have worked on just
>about every T-43A in the USAF, tells me he never saw one without a
>black box.
>
>Why would anyone want to murder Ron Brown.
>
>By all accounts, Ron Brown was a charming fellow who worked very
>hard and effectively to promote U.S business. Why, then, would
>anyone want to kill him? And who would have the resources to do it
>by bringing down the #2 airplane in the White House fleet? The
>answer, in brief, is that Ron Brown was going to prison -- no ifs,
>and's or but's about it. Also Bill Clinton's presidency was surely
>going down with him. And the President could not allow that. To
>anyone who has followed the story closely, this conclusion is
>inescapable. Brown was up to his neck in numerous major scandals:
>Whitewater, the Denver airport mess, Mensa, the Keating Five,
>Lillian Madsen and her Haitian prostitutes, etc. Small wonder that
>22 congressmen wrote Clinton in February 1995. Demanding he fire
>Brown. At the time of his murder, Brown was under investigation
>by: a special prosecutor in the Justice Department; the FDIC; the
>Congressional Reform and Oversight Committee; the FBI; the Energy
>Department; the Senate Judiciary Committee; and even his own
>Commerce Department Inspector General.
>
>But in case you missed the piecemeal accounts in the papers, here
>is an extremely condensed summary of 11 of Brown's woes. As I'll
>show below, many of them were shortly going to become Bill
>Clinton's woes:
>
>1. How did North Vietnam recently get the U.S. to drop its trade
>embargo against them so suddenly? Easy. As a leading Vietnamese
>businessman and official revealed to the press, the Communist
>government paid Brown $700,000 to do it. The money went into a
>Singapore bank account, the embargo fell, and Clinton squashed a
>feeble FBI attempt to investigate. He and Brown also neutralized a
>federal grand jury probe later.
>
>2. Brown sold plane seats on other trade trips besides the one to
>Bosnia/Croatia. Companies making big contributions to the
>Democratic Party or the Clinton Victory Fund could buy access and
>tax break or regulatory favors.
>
>3. The 1-23-95 U.S. News World Report broke the news that Brown
>had bought a $360,000 townhouse for his girlfriend, Lillian
>Madsen, a prominent political player and whorehouse madam from
>Haiti.
>
>4. Brown used to receive $12,500 a month as the P.R. agent for
>Baby Doc Duvalier, the much-loathed dictator of Haiti. Brown
>received this money for nearly five years, while he was a member
>of the Democratic National Committee. Brown also managed Baby
>Doc's $50 million Investment fund, most or all of which is now in
>Vietnam firms.
>
>5. Brown was a key board member of Chemfix, a Louisiana "waste
>management" corporation that landed a $210 million contract with
>New York City in 1990, with Brown's help. That was despite the
>fact that Chemfix had two other contracts with other
>municipalities canceled because of its inability to perform. Brown
>got company stock at 24% of market value, making him millions. New
>York mayor David Dinkins got to host the Democratic Convention. A
>typical Ron Brown win-win deal.
>
>6. Brown founded Capital Pebsco, which -- fresh out of the box --
>got a contract with Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry to handle
>the city's pension funds. Not a bad start for a new company with
>no investing experience.
>
>7. In a deal that has left CIA pedple livid, Brown okayed the sale
>of a new U.S. gas turbine engine to China. China will use the
>engines in its cruise missiles. McDonnell Douglas developed the
>turbine as a military engine. But Brown arbitrarily reclassified
>it as "civilian." That let China build a fleet of missiles, using
>U.S. engines and technology, which they can point at (who else?)
>the U.S.
>
>8. Brown irked Congress and most of Europe by acting as point man
>for Clinton to bring Iranian influence and weapons into the
>Bosnian War. That broke the U.S.- endorsed arms embargo. The money
>for the arms most likely came from Commerce and Agriculture, slush
>fund money channeled to U.S. manufacturers; from there to U.S.-
>friendly nations and firms overseas; and from there to Iran. The
>arms included helicopter gunships, big artillery, stinger
>missiles, land mines, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank weapons,
>grenade launchers, and other quality weapons. Most of the arms
>will stay on the European scene for decades to come, keeping the
>area destabilized. As one leading munitions dealer put it:
>"Iran/Contra was slingshots and cap guns compared to the
>quantities and size of arms given the Croatian Serbs" That is why
>the Croatian Muslims enthusiastically hosted Brown's planeload of
>executives. They felt gratitude for the free arms, as well as a
>desire to do deals.
>
>9. Brown was the partner of a Democratic fund-raiser named Nolanda
>Hill. Hill paid Brown $500,000 for his 50% interest in First
>International, Inc., a company that never made any profits. Most
>glaringly, Brown never invested a cent in First International.
>First International owned Corridor Broadcasting, which had
>defaulted on massive government loans of $40 million. The loans
>were passed on to the FDIC, which was unsuccessful in collecting
>anything from Hill. Yet at the same time, First International was
>making large contributions to the Democratic Party, and paying
>hundreds of thousands of dollars to Brown, through shell
>corporations. These payments to Brown -- thr6e checks for $45,000
>each -- were the core of Representative Clinger's evidence that
>forced Janet Reno to hire Daniel Pearson as special investigator
>of Brown's crimes. They were cashier's checks, all cut the same
>day in 1993, with sequential numbers. Yet supposedly, the money
>came from three contributors, acting independently. Brown never
>disclosed or paid any taxes on these amounts.
>
>10. By personally delivering a warning letter signed by Clinton,
>Brown was able to force a bargain deal with the Saudis for $6
>billion in American military aircraft and hardware. To get the
>planes, the Saudis also had to accept a fat $4 billion phone
>contract with AT&T: otherwise, they would get no aircraft. Also
>part of the deal: AT&T had a multi-million dollar side agreement
>with Brown's First International, which was hired as a
>"consultant" (see above). And the Democratic National Committee
>and the Clinton campaign fund were beneficiaries. This is how big
>business is done in Clinton's America.
>
>11. The last nail in Brown's coffin was pounded in four days
>before his crash. FBI and IRS agents subpoenaed as many as 20
>witnesses for a serious new grand jury probe of Brown in
>Washington. It seems that an Oklahoma gas company called Dynamic
>Energy Resources gave Brown's son Michael $500,000 in stock, a $
>160,000 cash payment, and exclusive country club memberships.
>Former Dynamic president Stewart Price told a Tulsa grand jury
>that the money was to be routed to Ron Brown, who was expected to
>"fix" a big lawsuit for Dynamic. There is little chance you heard
>about this death-knell, grand jury case. Radio station KTOK in
>Oklahoma reported it on March 28, 1996; the Washington Times made
>it a front-page story on March 29. But then a lock was put on the
>story. The AP and New York Times wire services blocked any further
>release of the information. Welcome to the new world order.
>
>Final proof:
>
>The 2-8-96 Washington Post reported Brown had retained top legal
>gun Reid Weingarten, a former high official in the Justice
>Department, as his criminal attorney. You don't pay his price
>($750 an hour) unless you know a criminal indictment is coming,
>and you're probably going to jail. Janet Reno appointed Daniel
>Pearson as Brown's special prosecutor earlier this year. She gave
>him blanket permission to investigate anything. That's when Brown
>angrily demanded that Clinton force her to withdraw Pearson. But
>Reno couldn't do that. She had been backed into a comer by Rep.
>William F. Clinger, Jr., chairman of the House Government Reform
>and Oversight Committee. Clinger had copies of Brown's First
>International checks, plus other incriminating documents. When
>Clinton said he couldn't comply, Brown went ballistic. His fatal
>mistake -- according to Brown confidants who requested anonymity -
>- was telling Clinton he wasn't going to take the rap. He wasn't
>going to let his wife and son take the rap, either. (Both had
>received hundreds of thousands in under-the-table payments
>themselves.) He was going to finger Bill and Hillary instead. That
>would have sunk Bill's reelection campaign on the spot.
>
>Dead man walking.
>
>>From that point on, Brown was dead. Like Vince Foster before him,
>he knew too much. He knew where all the money went for the
>payoffs, bribes, scams, money laundering, cover-ups, participation
>fees, hush money and side deals -- all the way from one-man
>operations to vast multinational trade treaty fixes. The phony
>suicide fake out used on Foster could not be repeated, of course.
>But an airplane crash is always viewed as an accident. So agents
>were sent -- not directly by Clinton, but through a White House
>staffer -- to a standing network of high-level killers, sometimes
>called the "Octopus." If the frequently stormy weather at Cilipi
>had not cooperated, there would always be another trip --
>somewhere, somehow -- and soon. If the preceding data were widely
>know, America would realize Bill Clinton is by far the most
>dangerous man ever to live in the White House. His complex
>personality certainly has a genial side. But a clear overall
>picture of this man must include the brutal nature of the hit team
>that carries out his muttered wishes, and looks after his
>political fortunes. This is not simply the rag-tag "Arkansas
>Mafia" that followed Clinton to Washington. It is a small but
>extremely well-organized network of pro-establishment heavy
>hitters and their ground-level operatives. With a few changes of
>face, they have been on the scene since the 1970's. They are a
>diverse band of high-level thugs who are the muscle squad of the
>establishment. If you are a member of Congress, I urge you to
>assign your most trusted staff members to investigate these
>crimes. Start with a conversation with Daniel Pearson. He is still
>willing to share his information.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
> ARTICLES FOR FAIR USE ONLY
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>-> Send "subscribe snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
>-> Posted by: Spirit Of Truth Page <JPA94001@UConnVM.UConn.Edu>
>
>
>
Return to Table of Contents for
Supreme Law School: E-mail