I realize these type stories are old news but I can't help but think they wil resurface if Hillary wins the primary. Is it resolved enough to be a nonfactor?
Cilipi Airport, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2:10 P.M.,
April 3, 1996:
Captain Amir Schic lands a twin-engine corporate jet
carrying the Croatian Prime Minister and the American
Ambassador.
It is one of five planes to land routinely on Runway 12 in the
hour preceding the scheduled 3:00 arrival of IFOR-2 1, the
Boeing T-43A carrying Ron Brown and his upbeat entourage
of American industrial deal-makers.
Cilipi Airport, 2:15 P.M.:
Businessmen begin to straggle into the lobby, a few carrying
umbrellas to ward off the very light to moderate rain.
They're early because they're anxious to greet the 35
Americans who at this moment are taking off from Tuzla,
Bosnia, 130 miles to the northeast. Outside, a perfect
breeze blows at 14 mph from east to west, perfect because
at 120' from north, it is only one degree off from being an
exact headwind for the landing pattern of IFOR-21.
Contrary to some U.S. news reports, it is not a dark and
stormy night. It is the middle of the afternoon.
The Radio Shack of Cilipi Airport, about 2:30 P.M.:
Maintenance Chief Niko Jerkuic, 46, nervously fiddles with
the dials on his NDR (Nondirectional Radio) beacon, the only
instrument he has that can guide approaching planes.
In a couple of hours, he will be a rich man, the two American
operatives told him, if he can quietly send IFOR-21 into Sveti
Ivan (St. John's Hill), one of the highest mountains in the
area at 2400 feet.
Jerkuic will simply shut his beacon down-at the same
moment that a decoy beacon is turned on by an American
operative sitting near the base of Sveti Ivan. This is an old
trick dating back to pirate days.
He inspects his terrain map again and again.
If he miscalculates ... well, the Americans did not look like
men who would forgive someone who botches a serious
assignment like this one.
All Jerkuic knows is that there is someone on the plane who
is very dangerous to the American President, and it is his
job to make sure the plane never lands.
With a shaky hand, he picks up a scrambled walkie-talkie
and rechecks with the American agent who is sitting in a
jeep at Sveti Ivan with another NDR in a suitcase beside him.
Jerkuic glances out at some broken clouds scudding by 400
feet above. They will have no effect. He will have to depend
on the main cloud cover at 2,000 feet. Sveti Ivan rises
almost 400 feet into this overcast. Jerkuic calculates that
the new signal will alter the plane's course by a full ten
degrees and send it far off course to the north into the
mountain. His timing will have to be perfect.
Money or no money, he begins to wonder if he's doing the
right thing.
Cilipi Airport, 2:48 P.M.:
Captain Schic climbs to the control tower to give IFOR-21 a
friendly radio greeting and reassurance that all is well.
He describes the Cilipi weather: Visibility eight kilometers (5
miles), winds still at 14 mph, all flights arriving non-normally.
Flying at about 10,000 feet and 40+ miles away, Co-captains
Ashley J. Davis, 35, and Tim Shafer, 33, thank Schic for his
words of welcome.
These conditions are later described by Newsweek and
others as "the worst storm in ten years" with "visibility just
100 yards." (Their portrayal of the weather is flatly denied by
Aviation Week and Space Technology.)
In the clouds over the Adriatic Sea. 2:50 P.M.:
IFOR-21 reports in to, Cilipi routinely. It is the last time their
voice is heard.
Split, Croatia, 2:52 P.M.:
The main regional radar station loses IFOR-21 from its
screen.
Cilipi Airport, 2:52 P.M.:
Jerkuic stops monitoring the control tower to detect any
other planes in the landing pattern. There are none, so he
calls the American at Sveti Ivan again. They countdown: 5,
4, 3, 2, 1. Simultaneously, Jerkuic shuts down and the
American powers up.
Kolocep Island, 2:54 P.M.:
IFOR-21 is on course as it passes over Cilipi's first beacon,
11.9 miles from the airport. It then locks onto the second
and final beam that is being transmitted from Sveti Ivan.
This changes the plane's actual direction from 119' to 109',
heading straight into Sveti Ivan. But the Cilipi control tower
doesn't know the plane is now off course. It has no radar.
Aboard an AWACS plane, 2:56 P.M.:
The U.S. Air Force plane keeping track of air traffic in the
Bosnian conflict area loses track of IFOR-21 just after it
passes over Dubrovnik. (Being the military version of a
Boeing 737-200, IFOR-21 is not easily lost.) Because it is
less than a mile off course at this point, no one on the
AWACS notes any problem.
Srebreno, Croatia, 2:57 P.M.:
Villagers hear a plane roaring past unusually low and close.
Plat, Croatia, 2:57 P.M.:
Villagers Ana and Miho Duplica rush outside and see
IFOR-21 looming "like a ghost out of the clouds."
Velji Do, Croatia, 2:58 P.M.:
Everyone in this tiny collection of stone huts at the base of
Sveti Ivan hears a plane go directly overhead in the clouds,
then rev its engines mightily for one instant.
Aboard the plane, the klaxon of its ground-proximity warning
device suddenly blares, jolting Captain Davis. He
immediately jerks the plane upward and to the left.
The two to three seconds of warning are far too little. The
plane's left wingtip touches ground, spinning it directly into
the rocky hillside, making an earth-shaking explosion.
There is the crackling hiss of a huge fireball as the plane
and its large load of gas bum. Then a dead silence in the
mist.
The tail section remains quite intact, but the rest of IFOR-21
is all over the hill, making later identification of many of the
passengers impossible. The nose of the fuselage is just a
blackish smudge in the ground.
All 35 people are dead except for stewardess Shelly Kelly,
who, riding in the tail, sustains only minor cuts and bruises.
Cilipi, 3:18 P.M.:
U.S. authorities are notified that IFOR-21 is down, location
completely unknown. However, they are to suffer II @ hours
of confusion before arriving at the scene-
Republic of South Africa, approximately 4:00 P.M.:
News reports say an attempt has been made on the life of
Ron Brown's law partner, Tommy Boggs, by unknown
assailants in a staged car accident in Capetown. Later,
Boggs refuses to discuss it.
Cilipi, later that afternoon:
Niko Jerkuic goes home to collect his reward, but the
reward is not waiting for him. It comes three days later: a
bullet through the chest, administered just shortly before he
is scheduled to be grilled by the U.S. Air Force accident
investigation team.
The hit squad wraps his hand around the gun and departs.
The Americans do not want a live witness who could spill
the beans later.
Like many of the Whitewater dead, Jerkuic is immediately
labeled a suicide, even though there's no evidence-and a
chest wound is a rather rare cause especially with a large
caliber pistol (unusual in Europe).
The quick official reason given for bachelor Jerkuic's death
is despondence over romantic troubles with his girlfriend.
At this point, however, we have not been able to find any
verification for this. Instead, what we have found is
neighbors and friends who all agree that Jerkuic was not
depressed. Like many of his friends who had survived the
years of the Bosnian war, he was excited that life was finally
getting better.
Crash site, 7:20 P.M.:
Four hours and 20 minutes after the crash, the first Croatian
Special Forces search party arrives on the scene and finds
only Ms. Kelly surviving. They call for a helicopter to
evacuate her to the hospital. when it arrives, she is able to
get aboard without assistance from the medics.
But Kelly never completes the short hop. She dies enroute.
According to multiple reports given to journalist/editor Joe L.
Jordan, an autopsy later reveals a neat three-inch incision
over her main femoral artery. It also shows that the incision
came at least three hours after all her other cuts and
bruises.
This datum, of course, creates in one's mind a horrifying
scene in the back of the chopper, as one Special Forces
operative holds down the struggling woman and muffles her
screams while another slices her leg.
Further necropsies will probably not happen. At this writing,
Clinton has ordered the cremation of all victims. It's hard to
perform autopsies on ashes.
All this cries, of course, for an explanation of why anyone
would be so eager to kill Ron Brown that they would take 34
innocent Americans along with him. I will address this issue
in a moment. But First let me describe the current state of
thinking on the cause of the crash.
Confusion or Coverup?
Ever since the crash, most reporters and officials have
refused to even consider the possibility of foul play.
Some of them have merely followed orders. But most of
them have instinctively fled from the highly disturbing
possibility that Ron Brown was assassinated by people
close to his own President.
So confronted with the total impossibility of two
experienced pilots following an NDR beam to a crash site
1.6 miles off course, 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:
- The Air Force's official explanation is that the pilots set the
compass on the IFOR-21 10' off course. That is impossible.
Pilots routinely set their compasses right before takeoff. If
they set the compass off 10', they would 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 NDR signal, not the
compass.
- One desperate explanation was a nasty crosswind that
"blew" the plane sideways. Not credible: This would require
a wind 90' off from the actual wind.
- Most of the press and officialdom have blamed poor
visibility to some extent. To do this, they have to take the
ferocity of the rainstorm later that afternoon and evening
and move it back in time to the crash hour. But records
show the weather from 2:54 P.M. to 2:58 P.M. was well
within the normal limits for landing. And NDR beacons never
get blown off course.
In any case, pilots more than a few miles from an airport
normally rely on a beam rather than visual sighting anyway.
- Pilot fatigue and strain? Not likely on a 45minute flight.
- Equipment malfunction on a rickety old plane? IFOR-21
was the number two plane in the White House fleet: in
essence, Air Force Two. 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, or they would have executed the
standard right turn within seconds. Plus, their landing gear
was locked down, showing that they expected to land at any
moment.
In sum, none of the "official" explanations to date have held
any water. And all of them ignore the glaring fact that
IFOR-21 did not simply stray off the path at the last moment;
by all accounts, it went straight as an arrow to its doom the
moment it left the Kolocep Island beacon and picked up the
Cilipi beacon. The problem had to be the Cilipi beacon,
which was shut down at the airport while a substitute
transmitter at Sveti Ivan was turned on.
And Even Worse...
Could the problem have been that technician Niko Jerkuic
had let his equipment become rundown? No, thousands of
landings had taken place while his equipment was running,
some just minutes before the crash. To transmit an NDR
beacon that's ten degrees off, it takes more than an
accident.
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 apparatus line planes up
with Sveti Ivan. It takes a sustained effort by a qualified
engineer. Plus, other planes had landed just before IFOR-21.
So Jerkuic had to shut off his beacon at the last minute.
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.
The unanimous opinion of our informants: This information,
if widely known, would eliminate any chance of Clinton's
re-election.
The First Time in History: Air Force Kills Investigation
The chief investigator for Pratt & Whitney happened to be at
the Paris Air Show on April 3.
Because Pratt & Whitney always sends an investigator
when a plane powered by their engines has a mishap, the
man called his boss in America, and said, in effect, "We've
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, the boss
called back. "Don't go," he said to the astonished employee.
"There's not going to be a safety investigation."
Sure enough, the Air Force had, for the first time in its
history, 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 or some remote general and go home.
At this time it's an open question whether the black boxes
will play a role. Within hours of the crash, the Croatian
Ministry of Transport announced that they had the black
boxes. One and a half days after the crash, Croatian TV
(plus Russian and French TV) announced that the FDR (flight
data recorder) and the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) were
safely in the hands of 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 disputed all this, stating
that there were no black boxes aboard. They claimed the
actual recovered boxes were designed to hold soda pop and
toilet paper. (The Croats, who feel they can tell a reel of tape
from a roll of toilet paper, are keeping mum.) Also, black
boxes are usually painted bright orange, and they can't be
opened with a thumb-or hardly at all.
It is difficult 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 us
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 very 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 a large White
House airplane?
The answer, in brief, is that Ron Brown was going to
prison-no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Also, Bill Clinton's presidency was surely going down with
him. And that the President would not allow.
To anyone who has followed the story closely, this
conclusion is obvious. Brown was up to his neck in
numerous major scandals: Whitewater, the Denver airport
mess, Mena, the Keating Five, Lillian Madsen and her Haitian
prostitutes, etc., etc. Small wonder that 22 congressmen
wrote Clinton in February of 1995, demanding that he fire
Brown.
At the time of his murder, Brown was under investigation by:
- a special prosecutor in the Justice Dept.
- the FDIC
- the Congressional Reform and Oversight Committee
- the FBI
- the Energy Dept.
- the Senate Judiciary Committee
- and even his own Commerce Dept. Inspector General.
But in case you missed the piecemeal accounts in the
papers, here is an extremely condensed summary of II of
Brown's woes (which were shortly going to become
Clinton's woes, as I'll show below):
1. How did North Vietnam recently get us to drop our trade
embargo against them so suddenly? Easy. As a
Vietnamese businessman and official later 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 get tax breaks 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. flack
for Baby Doc Duvalier, the much-loathed dictator of Haiti.
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 $2 1 0
million contract with New York City in 1990 with Brown's
help despite the fact that Chemfix had two contracts with
other municipalities canceled because of the company's
inability to perform. Brown got company stock at 24% of
market value (making him millions) and 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 D.C. mayor Marion Barry to handle
the city's pension funds. Not a bad start for a new company
with no investing experience. Brown earned huge fees.
7. In a deal that left CIA people livid, Brown okayed the sale
of a new U.S. gas turbine engine to China for use in its
cruise missiles. McDonnell Douglas developed the turbine
as a military engine, but by arbitrarily reclassifying it as
"civilian," Brown enabled China to build a fleet of
missiles-which they can point at America (whom else?),
powered by our own engines. As part of the lucrative deal,
McDonnell Douglas agreed to set up an airplane
manufacturing plant using cheap slave labor in China.
8. Brown irked Congress and most of Europe by acting as
point man for Clinton to bring Iranian Muslims and their
weaponry into the Bosnia war. That broke the
U.S.-endorsed arms embargo. The money for the arms was
most likely from Commerce and Agriculture, slush fund
money channeled to U.S. manufacturers, thence to
U.S.friendly nations and firms overseas, thence to Iran. The
arms included: helicopter gunships stinger missiles
*land mines
*anti-aircraft guns
*anti-tank weapons
*grenade launchers
... and other quality weaponry, most of which will remain 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 Croatians were enthusiastically hosting
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 fundraiser named
Nolanda Hill, who paid him $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
Int'l.
First Int'l owned Corridor Broadcasting, which had defaulted
on massive government loans of $40 million. The loans
were passed to the FDIC, which was unsuccessful in
collecting anything from Hill, even though at that time the
firm was making large contributions to the Democratic
Party and paying hundreds of thousands to Brown through
shell corporations.
These payments to Brown (three checks for $45,000 each)
were the core of evidence gathered by Rep. William F.
Clinger, Jr., that forced Reno to hire Daniel Pearson as
special investigator of Brown's crimes. They were
cashier's checks, all cut on the same day in 1993 with
sequential numbers even though the money supposedly
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. The quid pro quo: To get the planes, the Saudis
also had to accept a fat $4 billion phone contract with AT&T.
Also part of the deal: AT&T had a side agreement with
Brown's First International (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 the 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. Fortner 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 deathknell, grand
jury case. It was reported on radio station KTOK in
Oklahoma on March 28 and on the front page of the
Washington Times 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 that 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 prices ($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. When she gave him blanket permission to
investigate anything, 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. Clinger, who is
chairman of the House Govemment Refonn and Oversight
Conimittee. Clinger had copies of Brown's First International
checks, among 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 that 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 of dollars in under-the-table payments
themselves.) He was going to finger Bill and Hillary instead.
That would have sunk the reelection campaign on the spot.
Dead Man Walking