Liberation News Service: Latest government report on Wellstone 'accident' finds its scapegoats, many questions remain

January 03, 2004

Latest government report on Wellstone 'accident' finds its scapegoats, many questions remain

There are many disturbing story lines that emerged
from the 2002 mid-term elections. Those of us who can
filter out the propapunditgandists and listen to the
pulse of the nation KNEW that the US Senate was going
to stay under Democratic control and that there might
even by an added vote or two to the majority. The most
disturbing story lines involve the mysterious death of
Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota) and the defeat of
Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA)...Wellstone's death has left
many unanswered questions, and like the death of Gov.
Mel Carnahan (D-Misery) who also died in a small plane
crash during a hotly contested Senate race in 2000,
Wellstone was on his way to victory. The LNS
subsequently introduced the term "Wellstoned," as in
"to be Wellstoned." Cleland's defeat? Well, Cleland
and the people of Georgia were probably the victims of
the black box voting...

2+2=4

Here is the latest on the Wellstone case.

Jackson Thoreau: At a meeting full of war veterans in Willmar, Minn.,
days before his death, Wellstone told attendees that
Cheney told him, "If you vote against the war in Iraq,
the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary
to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you
and the state of Minnesota."

Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)

http://www.liberalslant.com/jt123003.htm

Latest government report on Wellstone 'accident' finds its scapegoats, many questions remain

By: Jackson Thoreau - 12/30/03

I'm for the little fellers, not the Rockefellers. -
Sen. Paul Wellstone

Shortly before he died in a mysterious airplane crash
11 days prior to the 2002 elections, Minnesota Sen.
Paul Wellstone met with Vice President Dick Cheney,
probably the Bush administration's most evil public
face.

Cheney was rounding up Senate support for the October
2002 vote on giving the administration carte blanche
to invade Iraq, with or without blessing from the
United Nations. Cheney strong-armed opposing
politicians like the most vindictive of mafioso
leaders, and opponents usually gave in.

But not Wellstone. Whatever you thought of his
progressive brand of politics, he wasn't a wimp. And
that's what made him more than dangerous in the eyes
of people like Cheney.

At a meeting full of war veterans in Willmar, Minn.,
days before his death, Wellstone told attendees that
Cheney told him, "If you vote against the war in Iraq,
the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary
to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you
and the state of Minnesota."

Wellstone cast his vote for his conscience and against
the Iraq measure, the lone Democrat involved in a
tough 2002 election campaign to do so. And a few weeks
later on Oct. 25, as he appeared to be winning his
re-election bid, Wellstone, his wife, Sheila, his
daughter, Marcia Markuson, three campaign staffers,
and two pilots died in a plane crash in Minnesota.

Talk about "severe ramifications."

My first hunch upon hearing about the tragedy was that
the Beech King Air A-100 was tampered with by right
wingers, possibly the CIA, either directly or through
electromagnetic rays or some psychic mind games.

And nothing I have heard or read since then has made
me drift from that hunch.
I'm not alone. The Duluth News Tribune featured a
column by Jim Fetzer, a University of Minnesota-Duluth
philosophy professor and author, in November 2003.
Fetzer wrote that an FBI "recovery team" headed out to
investigate the Wellstone plane crash BEFORE the plane
went down. "I calculate that this team would have had
to have left the Twin Cities at about the same time
the Wellstone plane was taking off," Fetzer wrote.

That apparent prior knowledge was similar to Dallas
police putting out an all-points bulletin for accused
John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald at 12:43
p.m. in 1963 for shooting a police officer. The
problem was the officer was not shot until 23 minutes
later.

Fetzer also noted that Wellstone's plane was
"exceptional, the pilots well-qualified, and the
weather posed no significant problems." He wrote that
"we have to consider other, less palatable,
alternatives, such as small bombs, gas canisters or
electromagnetic pulse, radio frequency or High Energy
Radio Frequency weapons designed to overwhelm
electrical circuitry with an intense electromagnetic
field. An abrupt cessation of communication between
the plane and the tower took place at about 10:18
a.m., the same time an odd cell phone phenomenon
occurred with a driver in the immediate vicinity. This
suggests to me the most likely explanation is that one
of our new electromagnetic weapons was employed."

Michael Ruppert, publisher of From the Wilderness,
wrote that the day after the crash he received a
message from a former CIA operative who was familiar
with those kinds of assassinations. The message read,
"As I said earlier, having played ball [and still
playing in some respects] with this current crop of
reinvigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody
to screw around with. There will be a few more
strategic accidents. You can be certain of that."

Ruppert also interviewed two Democratic Congress
representatives who said they believed Wellstone was
murdered. One said, "I don't think there's anyone on
the Hill who doesn't suspect it. It's too convenient,
too coincidental, too damned obvious. My guess is that
some of the less courageous members of the party are
thinking about becoming Republicans right now."

Even National Transportation Safety Board officials
found aspects of Wellstone's accident puzzling. An
article in the Duluth News Tribune a few days after
the tragedy said that "for some still unexplained
reason - [the plane] turned off course and crashed."
It quoted Carol Carmody, the NTSB's acting chair and
reportedly a former CIA employee, as saying, "We find
the whole turn curious."

NTSB blames pilots

But in November 2003, the NTSB blamed the two pilots
of Wellstone's plane, Richard Conry and Michael Guess,
for the crash. The pilots flew too high and too fast
when they began a left turn toward the runway, then
let it slow to dangerous levels, the NTSB said.

The NTSB also accused Conry and Guess of not even
monitoring the instruments. "One of them should have
been monitoring the instruments," said Bill Bramble, a
human performance investigator for the NTSB.

Still, NTSB board member Richard Healing called the
conclusion "speculative," pointing out that the report
did not say how the pilots missed the red flags or why
they failed to make adjustments.

"We don't know why," Healing said. "It's quite
speculative."

The conclusion was especially disturbing considering
the NTSB's own simulations, which included flying a
plane at abnormally slow speeds and being unable to
bring it down. That by itself should have forced
consideration of other possible causes.

The NTSB said that Conry made mistakes on previous
flights that were covered by his co-pilots and was
convicted of mail fraud related to a home-building
business in 1990. But Wellstone had used Aviation
Charter since 1992 and had flown numerous other times
with Conry, with whom he was reportedly comfortable.
Conry passed a proficiency test just two days before
the tragedy, and some attorneys said regulations did
not require revocation of a pilot's license because of
a criminal conviction unless it involved drugs or
alcohol.

While the NTSB said some fellow pilots questioned the
skill levels of Conry and Guess, Conry had more than
5,000 hours of flying time, according to his
management company, Aviation Charter Inc. of Eden
Prairie, Minn..

Family members of Wellstone reached a $25 million
settlement in mid-2003 with Aviation Charter.

Several pilots said the NTSB was just looking for
scapegoats. "It is hard to believe that two
experienced pilots would fail to monitor airspeed,"
one said.

As in the case of JFK, the scapegoats who took the
blame were conveniently dead.

And many questions remained.

Electromagnetic pulse device suspected

More people than Fetzer and I believe that Wellstone's
plane could have been hit with an electromagnetic
pulse [EMP] device that caused the aircraft to
suddenly turn off course.

Electromagnetic pulses from military craft may have
been responsible for several civilian airline
disasters in the late 1990s, according to an article
in The London Observer. In particular, Swissair 111 in
1998 and TWA 800 in 1996 both took the same route over
Long Island, experienced trouble in the same region,
suffered catastrophic electrical malfunctions, and
were flying at a time when military exercises
involving submarines and U.S. Navy P3 fighter planes
were being conducted.

Experts have even testified before Congress about
concerns that terrorists may use EMPs, which they said
were capable of short-circuiting computers,
satellites, radios, radar, and traffic lights. An EMP
shockwave can be produced by a device small enough to
fit in a briefcase, they said. Stanley Jakubiak,
senior civilian official for nuclear command, control,
communications, and EMP policy for the Defense
Department, admitted in 1999 Congressional testimony
that the feds have studied EMPs for years.

U.S. Marine Corp Major M. CaJohn went farther than
that in a 1988 report, writing that officials had
sought remedies for the effects of EMPs at least since
the early 1960s. The Air Force built an EMP testing
facility called TRESTLE in 1980 at Kirkland Air Force
Base in New Mexico. The Navy also erected an EMP
testing facility called EMPRESS I at Point Patience on
the Patuxent River in Maryland. Other agencies have
their own EMP facilities.

Fetzer also reports on other instances and reports,
including nuclear tests by Soviets and Americans in
the 1960s resulting in gigantic releases of
electromagnetic energy. There is also this 1998 U.S.
Department of Justice document describing these
devices:
http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/sl298.txt.

First developed in the 19th century, EMPs now are
relatively easy to obtain. Anyone can acquire an EMP
generator through the Internet, such as at
http://www.amazing1.com/emp.htm.

Theoretically, a person a few miles from the runway
could bombard the aircraft with an intense
electromagnetic pulse, which could cause an electrical
failure, instantly knock out radio communication,
disrupt normal engine ignition, and cause loss of
steering control. The steering control surfaces on
these airplanes are controlled by individual
electrical actuators that are mechanically linked to
the rudder, ailerons, and flaps.

This type of sabotage would leave no physical evidence
on the aircraft, although it's possible that people at
the airport or in the general vicinity might have
noticed electrical anomalies like radio noises, a
crashed computer, telephone disruption, and so on.

A Texas software engineer wrote me that EMPs damage
systems by generating an electrical pulse in the
system wiring. Therefore, a component would not have
to be directly exposed to an EMP to be damaged. An
aircraft struck by an EMP pulse would not likely die,
unless the plane was hit by an extremely powerful EMP
pulse.

"More likely, an EMP strike would disable delicate
electronic systems, leaving electrical systems
intact," the engineer wrote. "After being struck by an
EMP, the aircraft would likely function more or less
normally, but without any control systems,
instruments, or radios. This would account for the
assertion that the Wellstone plane's engines were
still running when the plane hit the ground."

Another electrical engineer wrote, "You don't need
anything as elaborate as an EMP generator. Standard
issue radio transmitters can screw up a landing."

Lawrence Judd, an Illinois attorney, wrote the NTSB to
ask whether it has or will investigate the possibility
that EMF weapons were used to bring down the planes of
Senators Wellstone and Carnahan. Robert Benzon wrote
him back, thusly, "The NTSB is unaware of any mobile
EM force or EM pulse weapon system capable of
disabling an aircraft at the ground-to-air ranges that
existed in either of the accidents you mention in your
email."

But Fetzer noted that what the NTSB may or may not be
"aware of" depends on its state of actual or feigned
ignorance. "In this day and age, there is no excuse
for any such lack of knowledge about increasingly
familiar weapons," Fetzer wrote me in an email. "It
reminds me of the Warren Report's conclusion that
there was ‘no credible evidence’ of conspiracy in the
death of JFK. It all depends on what you are willing
to consider ‘credible.’ Today, such a statement would
be considered laughable - similarly that of the NTSB."

Weird cell phone interference reported

John Ongaro, a Minnesota lobbyist, wrote to Fetzer
about his experience the day Wellstone died. Ongaro
said he was driving to the same funeral that Wellstone
and his party were flying to in Eveleth, Minn. While
traveling north on Hwy. 53 near the Eveleth-Virginia
Municipal Airport in the same area as Wellstone's
plane, he received a call on his cell phone at
precisely the same time Wellstone's King Air veered
off course.

"This call was in a league of its own," Ongaro said.
"When I answered it, what I heard sounded like a cross
between a roar and a loud humming noise. The noise
seemed to be oscillating, and I could not make out any
words being spoken. Instead, just this loud,
grotesque, sometimes screeching and humming noise."

What he heard may very well have been electronic
interference from an EMP or microwave weapon.

One writer to talk show host Jeff Rense suggested a
scenario involving "black op specialists" in a van or
truck full of radio/instrument landing jamming
equipment. "As Wellstone's plane approaches the
airport, the VOR/ILS jamming equipment is activated,
and a 'decoy' VOR signal is sent to the plane, thus
tricking the plane's instruments [and the pilot] into
believing the airport is somewhere several degrees off
the true course to the runway," S.H. wrote. "The pilot
follows that signal straight into the ground. The
non-descript van, full of covert electronic jamming
equipment, casually leaves the area, looking just like
any other TV repair truck or moving van."

Witnesses hear an explosion, see a flash of light

One witness of Wellstone's crash, Megen Williams, who
lived near the Eveleth airport, told the St. Paul
Pioneer Press that she heard "a diving noise and then
an explosion" as she prepared for work as a nurse in
her home near the crash site. At first, she thought it
was blasting at a nearby iron ore mine, and she didn't
call authorities.

Another local resident, Rodney Allen, said the plane
flew right over his house. "It was so close the
windows were shaking," Allen said. He added that the
craft was "crabbing to the right," then less than a
minute later, he felt an impact and heard what he
thought sounded like a loud rifle shot. St. Paul
Pioneer Press, Oct. 26, 2002

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety
Board said the plane was last seen on air traffic
control radar at 10:21 a.m., flying at an elevation of
1,800 feet. Radar tapes indicate Wellstone's plane had
descended to about 400 feet and was traveling at only
85 knots near the end of its flight.

Another person saw a blond-haired man on CNN saying he
observed a flash of light at the rear of the plane.

Don Sipola, a former president of the Eveleth Virginia
Municipal Airport Commission, said "something" caused
Wellstone's plan to veer off course at low altittude.
"This was a real steep bank, not a nice, gentle
don't-spill-the-coffee descent," Siploa said. "This is
more like a space shuttle coming down. This was not a
controlled descent into the ground."

The pilots of Wellstone's plane radioed that they were
two miles out, clicked up the runway lights, and had
the airstrip in sight, said Traci Chacich, the
airport's office manager. That was the last that
airport employees heard from them.

Weather not that bad

Some officials and media reports blamed bad weather,
but witnesses said conditions were not that bad at the
time of Wellstone's accident. It was cloudy with a
little ice, but there was little wind. Other pilots
landed without problem during that same time and said
the conditions were not bad. Airport visibility was
about 3 miles at the time the plane went down, which
was adequate.

Another pilot who landed a slightly larger twin-engine
plane at the same airport that same day a couple of
hours before Wellstone's plane crashed, told the St.
Paul Pioneer Press that he experienced no significant
problems. There was very light ice, "but nothing to be
alarmed about," pilot Ray Juntunen said. "It shouldn't
have been a problem."

According to the NTSB, Wellstone's pilots received
warnings of icing at 9,000 to 11,000 feet and were
allowed to descend to 4,000 feet. Juntunen said he was
able to see the airport from five miles out, and
another pilot landed 30 minutes later and said the
clouds were a little lower, but still not bad.

Frank Hilldrup, lead investigator for the NTSB, said
the landing gear of Wellstone's plane appeared to be
down.

The King Air had a reputation as one of the safest
turboprops around, many manufacturers and pilot said.
Some 50 accidents involving King Air A100s had
occurred between 1975 and 2002, according to the FAA.
Five were fatal, but three of those weren't the
plane's fault.

Wellstone was target of apparent assassination in 2000

Wellstone was the target of an apparent assassination
plot before. In 2000, as he visited Colombia to survey
conditions there, a bomb was found along his route
from the airport. He was also sprayed with the
herbicide glyphosate by a helicopter above him while
watching the Colombian police demonstrate its
fumigation of coca plants. Officials called the
incident an accident.

Wellstone was a vocal opponent of military aid to the
Colombian government. While there, he visited human
rights activists who said the government did not
protect civilians. Wellstone told reporters he thought
his Colombian hosts created the bomb story to dissuade
him from traveling to certain areas of the country. "I
don't know whether I was targeted, but I certainly
know that the human rights activists are targeted,"
Wellstone said.

Among the weird events since Wellstone's death was
that his successor in the U.S. Senate, Republican Norm
Coleman, was named chairman of the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations. As Fetzer said, that's
a practically unheard of position for a freshman
senator with no previous experience. Could that be why
Congress has not opened a formal investigation into
Wellstone's death?

For my part, I'm not a big conspiracy nut who worries
about this kind of thing all the time - just an
average one like Oliver Stone who knows there's
something sinister and weird going on in our world. I
have done extensive research into the JFK
assassination in Dallas. The right wing of the CIA was
heavily involved in that, from Oswald's CIA
connections to the Dallas mayor at that time being the
brother of the former CIA deputy director who lost his
job after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and blamed that on
JFK. The Dallas mayor may even have approved the
change in the parade route on that fateful day so it
would go right by the grassy knoll and building where
Oswald and probably other snipers were, where JFK met
his death.

I have interviewed numerous people who reported weird
things that occurred during that time, such as key
witnesses dying in strange ways like mysterious plane
crashes and being run over by trains in the middle of
the night. I have written numerous stories on this and
covered it in my book on Dallas history - and have
received my share of threatening phone calls, mail
opened, and the like to know I was stepping on some
powerful toes.

There were also numerous JFK murder witnesses
committing suicide in the months after that tragedy.
The CIA has done extensive mind control work for
decades - I know at least one psychic personally who
started working for the CIA in the 1980s - and could
possibly convince someone through such mind games to
commit suicide. Could they psychically work on making
a plane crash? Who knows? Anything is possible.

Similarities with Carnahan, Kennedy crashes

What about Democratic Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, who
was killed during a close Senate race when his small
plane crashed right before the 2000 election? What
about John F. Kennedy Jr., who had intelligence,
political ambitions, charisma, and the name, dying in
a 1999 plane crash?

In both of those cases, the planes were already
descending towards their landing and then suddenly
wandered off their approach paths and crashed, similar
to Wellstone's craft. In all three cases, radio
contact appears to have been cut off while the planes
were still in the air, possibly indicating electrical
failures on board.

In Kennedy's case, at least one witness saw a flash in
the sky and heard an explosion before the plane went
down, as in Wellstone's situation. Kennedy's plane was
also left unguarded at Teeterborough Airport in New
Jersey, and almost anyone could have placed something
inside it.

The list of high-profile Democratic politicians killed
in plane crashes goes on - Commerce Secretary Ron
Brown in 1996, Rep. Mickey Leland of Texas in 1989,
Rep. Jerry Litton of Missouri in 1976 [who was also
involved in a hard-fought election at the time], House
Majority Leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Rep. Nick
Begich of Alaska in 1972. High-profile Republicans
have died in crashes, including Sen. John Heinz of
Pennsylvania and Sen. John Tower of Texas in 1991, but
not as many as Democrats.

In fact, of 22 air crashes involving state and federal
officials, including one ambassador and one cabinet
official, From the Wilderness found that 14 - 64
percent - were Democrats and eight - 36 percent - were
Republicans.

Add to that Raytheon Co., one of the biggest U.S.
military contractors and manufacturer of the plane
that crashed with Wellstone in it, being a huge donor
to Republicans, and the mind continues to wonder. U.S.
House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas,
for instance, received $48,201 alone from Raytheon in
1997-98. The Republican National Committee received at
least $170,000 from Raytheon since 1999. Raytheon
donates to Democrats, too, but more than twice as much
money goes to Republicans.

Raytheon has all kinds of CIA connections, as does
Bush, whose father, remember, was once director of the
CIA. One of the more intriguing discoveries that
emerged from the NTSB's own investigation of this case
was that Raytheon not only not only manufactured EM
force and EM pulse weapons, but also manufactured the
King Air A100. No other entity would have been better
positioned to have taken it down. See
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2003/AAR0303.htm for more
details.

Bush, for his part, issued some strange comments
immediately after Wellstone's crash, even for him. He
called Wellstone - who was an articulate, energetic,
intelligent political science professor for 21 years
before he was a senator - a "plain-spoken fellow." He
said he wanted to issue his "condolences for the loss
of the Senate." Did he mean the Democrats' sudden loss
of the Senate, which occurred the day Wellstone died?
Did he know something more than he let on?

Bush once called Wellstone a 'chicken shit'

There was no love lost between the Bush clan and
Wellstone. In 1990, as Wellstone challenged the
Persian Gulf War preparations, Bush Sr. even referred
to Wellstone as a "chicken shit." When Wellstone first
met Bush Jr. in 2001, the latter disrespectfully
called him "Pablo."

As The Nation said in May 2002, getting rid of
Wellstone was a passion for Bush, Karl Rove, and
Cheney. "There are people in the White House who wake
up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat
Paul Wellstone," a senior Republican aide told The
Nation. "This one is political and personal for them."

No senator had a more consistent record of voting
against Bush administration proposals in 2001.
Wellstone voted against the Homeland Security Act and
many of Bush's judicial nominees. He pushed for
stronger environmental programs, for genuine measures
to counter corporate fraud, and for investigations
into Sept. 11 and $350 million that was missing from
the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Freepers' comments I read about this tragedy were
mostly tasteful - on the surface - though some jokes
and conspiratorial posts were published on their
right-wing site. Right after the news of the crash,
some posted comments like "prayers for control of the
Senate." Several comments were removed by the
moderator. One that was not said, "You do realize that
as we sit here praying for one of our biggest
political enemies' safety, President Bush will be
blamed by the Democrats [including the rabid leftists
at DU and other brain-sucking sites] for the crash."

Another joked, "Maybe it was shot down by a right wing
militia. We've got to ban handguns." And another said,
"Ted Kennedy may have been on [the plane]." Then there
was this ramble: "Politically speaking, would this be
good or bad news for the GOP if he's dead? I could see
him winning now like Carnahan in 2000 so that Gov.
Jesse could appoint his successor. I'm thinking this
is probably not good news."

And this comment: "Any bets on how quickly the
Democrats will have his wife take his place on the
ballot?" Hello? Sen. Wellstone's wife died in the
tragedy, remember? Another post predicted that
"[Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota] Coleman's
campaign is dead." And then there was this message: "I
pray that Wellstone and all of his aides survive, and
live to see themselves defeated handily on Nov
5th...unless this is yet another of Tom 'Caligula'
Daschle's election schemes." Someone else added,
"Carnahan II? Ventura is the governor, not a D...this
time."

Such conservatives' glee at the demise of probably the
most powerful real progressive in the country was
entirely evident in such comments. Many contained
themselves, but we know what they're really thinking,
don't we?

And a few days after Wellstone's death, right wingers
were selling and displaying on their vehicles
insensitive bumper stickers with messages like, "He's
dead, get over it." How's that for "compassionate
conservatism?"