Wellstone: Murder or Accident? A guide to hypotheses (from Oct. 2002)

[JackRiddler]

Since this question is being raised again, I dug up the following essay and notes, originally posted here in the week after Paul Wellstone, his wife and daughter were killed along with two pilots and others, when their plane crashed on approach to an airport in rural Minnesota. It still applies, and all that needs to be added is that Mondale lost the vote for Wellstone's seat to Norm Coleman a few days later, and the next year the NTSB team led by former CIA veteran Carol Carmody published its conclusion that the plane crash was likely the result of pilot error.

--

EVENT

A national politician is killed in a commuter plane crash, on approach to a rural airport in moderately bad weather, just before he is up for election.

HYPOTHESIS 1: ACCIDENT

Accidents happen all the time. Testing this hypothesis requires we use the physical sciences to look at how an accident might have happened.

HYPOTHESIS 2: ASSASSINATION

Assassinations of politicians have often occurred, and airplane sabotage with concommitant cover-up is one means. Testing requires not only a forensic search for signs of sabotage, but also a consideration of why an assassination might have happened. That means looking for suspects and possible motives, means and (we hope) an evidentiary trail. This may require we understand the given historical or political situation that may have made the assassination likelier.

Note that Hypothesis 2 does not automatically suggest a specific suspect. Note also that anyone executing a Hypothesis 2 scenario would do whatever was possible to make it look like Hypothesis 1, up to and including hiding the forensic evidence or attempting to influence the investigation.

In considering these two eminently possible hypotheses, it is easy to argue at cross-purposes, because the first posits a physical accident whereas the second looks for a historical event. Hypothesis 1, accident, is evaluated with the methods of the physical sciences, aviation, and also criminal forensics. Hypothesis 2, assassination, is framed and examined using the methodologies of history, political science and criminal psychology, as well as of physical sciences, aviation and criminal forensics. These methodologies necessarily use different standards of evidence and occur on seperate levels of reality. So there is no one "scientific method" we can apply.

In a real investigation, it is vital that both hypotheses, foul play and accident, be considered from the beginning, because data is almost always collected only proceeding from a working hypothesis, with the intent of testing it. A relevant example here: If an aviation event is presumed to be terrorism, the FBI is appointed to lead on the case and as criminologists they will (we presume) look at the data differently than the NTSB, who will be appointed to lead the case if the event is a presumed accident.

Especially vital is that Hypothesis 2 be considered openly from the beginning, since foul play implies assassins who would be trying to make their act look like the tragic but innocent Hypothesis 1. If you are not looking for foul play, you might not discover evidence of it. Worse is if the foul play was committed or arranged by powerful people, who might have the means to influence the investigation even if the investigators are honest. We have recent examples of how the NTSB can be called off an investigation altogether, i.e., the 9/11 investigations.

To put the above in legal terms, presumption of foul play is acceptable at the start of the investigation, in fact it is the normal way that prosecutors work. Arguing for foul play in no way conflicts with the principle of presumption of innocence in a trial of defendants after indictment. In fact, considering "foul play" in itself does not even as yet specify a suspect.

Actuarial treatises on the odds of dying by one means or another are irrelevant, until we get at least the above straight, so that we can frame relevant questions. Even then, the statistics of probability will prove nothing, since all events are complex and extremely unlikely until they happen, after which the chance of their having happened is 100 percent.

If it really mattered, here is how I would frame the statistical question:

Which is likelier, based on all events to date:
1. That a frequent flyer anywhere in the world will die in a commuter plane crash in a rural area during mildly poor weather conditions?
2. That a politician on the senatorial level is assassinated anywhere in the world by the means of foul play directed against his airplane?

Note that there are many proven cases of both. Frequent flyers die in accidents. As for examples of aviation sabotage, consider four cases from outside the United States, the shooting-down of the President of Burundi's flight in 1994 (with the President of Rwanda on board), the 1989 plane crash that killed Pakistani Dictator Zia and the American ambassador to Pakistan, the 1970s killing of Panamanian General Omar Torrijos, and the suspicious plane crash that killed UN General Secretary Dag Hammarskjkold in 1960.

Trying to estimate the probability of an accident is fairly useless, because there is no way to definitively define the terms of the event: What is "mildly bad" weather? How dangerous are different types of commuter planes? What is a "politician on the senatorial level"? Honestly, I would expect Hypothesis 2 to be the statistically likelier, i.e. that a high-level politician faces a higher risk of death from assassination, possibly even from assassination by means of aviation sabotage, than from an accident as a frequent flyer.

Does all this suffice to demonstrate that Hypothesis 2 must be considered alongside Hypothesis 1? Absolutely.

Those who lean towards Hypothesis 1 might study the mechanics of icing on a plane's wings, which however have already been shown to be irrelevant in this case, since the conditions for icing were not actually present. So now they can turn towards the possibile mechanics of an instrument failure, for example.

Those who lean towards Hypothesis 2 might, among other steps, study the history of assassinations, to look for signs of consistency with the present case.

These are separate methodologies, apples and oranges. There is a legitimate place for both.

We do not have access to the physical data. This would not be a problem, if we could trust the investigation to look at the actual evidence. However, there is also a history of investigations forced to reach false conclusions. This is most likely to happen in the case of a politically delicate matter, for example a possible assassination.

Meanwhile, we do have some access to the history and political context -- which, however, is meaningful only in evaluating Hypothesis 2. Keeping that in mind, let us at least look at that.

The method of history is almost always circumstantial and difficult, more an art than a science. There are a thousand ways to approach it. We might ask, were Wellstone's actions threatening someone who wanted to get him out of the way?

Or we might ask, what do other possible foul-play airplane assassinations with cover-ups look like? One source of data for this is a list of politicians killed in plane crashes provided by CNN, which I insert below. The whole list could be accidents, of course. I doubt the whole list is assassinations. But out of that CNN list and other cases, here are some of the cases that immediately interest me:

1970. House Majority leader Hale Boggs, who sat on the Warren Commission and recently openly announced his doubts about it, died in a plane crash (actually a disappearance; the plane was never found).

1972. The CNN list below mentions the death of a Rep. Collins in a plane crash. Not mentioned, but also killed in that crash was Dorothy Hunt, the wife of the Watergate "plumber" Howard Hunt. See clip below for the interesting report that this plane was full of would-be Watergate whistleblowers, traveling in a group.

1976. A Democrat whose name escapes me was killed in a plane crash in Missouri immediately after winning the gubernatorial primary. (Hmmm... Do Missouri Republicans play hardball?)

1983. Rep. Larry McDonald. Head of John Birch Society. South Korean airliner KAL 007 shot down by fighter jet after veering into Soviet airspace.

1991. April 4th. Republican Senator John Heinz, Chair of Banking Committee, would have known pretty much everything about the Savings-and-Loan and BCCI complex, i.e. the Bush administration's plunder and money-laundering operations, dies in a helicopter-plane collision.
The next day, April 5th. Former Republican Sen. John Tower, who ran the 1986 Tower Commission, which investigated (and basically covered up) the complex of Bush-Reagan administration crimes known as "Iran-Contra," dies in a plane crash. Tower, who failed as Bush's first nominee for Secy. Defense, is reported to have been working on an Iran-Contra book.
This confluence is astonishing because these are the two Republican leaders not directly inside the Bush Administration who would have known the most about its dealings, and who would have been in the best position to reveal everything. They were both positioned at the levers of exposure.
Of course, since the mechanics of the helicopter-plane collision seem exceptional (we may rightly doubt the helicopter was a kamikaze?!), the confluence of these two incidents could just be a kind of cosmic bad karma, designed to make the Bush admin look very, very criminal. I confess my "bias": I find that unbelievable.

1996. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown killed in Croatia crash. Apparently only cabinet member to die like this in last 35 years. (Hmmm, how much do cabinet members fly?)

1999. JFK Jr., possible future candidate for president, possibly a skeptic about his father's death, possessed the means to pursue independent investigation, dies in a plane crash.

2000. Mel Carnahan, Ashcroft opponent. Doesn't sound like a sure murder to me, but well remembered. Came immediately before a putsch to take over the national government by the incoming Bush regime.

2002. Wellstone. Similar circumstances to Carnahan case. Leading liberal, at a time when the putsch is accelerating.

If Wellstone was targeted, by the way, then in my opinion not because it would lose a seat for the Democrats. More likely it helps secure the seat, but let's wait and see (NOTE: The Repubican in fact won). It would have been done specifically to kill him because he was going to win, and somebody didn't want him around in the Senate for another six years.

To me, the cases above are all clearly suspicious. The regularity with which these events hit people with the means and possible motive to blow apart a given power structure, like Boggs, Tower and Heinz, and possibly Wellstone, is astonishing on its face. I mean, it doesn't seem to hit lesser-known or average politicians as often as potential whistleblowers, so it looks like there are assassinations in the mix. Also, it hits Senators a lot more than it hits representatives.

Again, all of the above examples are possible accidents. But they show a disturbing consistency. Over a time period of 35 years, we would not expect to see zero political assassinations by aviation sabotage in a country of 270 million people, especially given that the method has been used in many other countries.

Next, the history of confirmed assassinations in the U.S. generally. Most of these are said to be by the lone nut brigade. Every single case has met with controversy about the evidence, to say the least. These Lone Nut guys have an astonishing tendency to get people who are progressive leaders or otherwise inconvenient to the covert power structure: JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, RFK. There were also the attempts on Ford (which would have made Rockefeller president), Reagan (which would have made Bush president just three months into the first term) and racist leader George Wallace. Leaving aside the presidents, who as ultimate lightning rods might be targeted by many interests (or "lone nuts") for many reasons, the preponderance is directed against liberal and radical leadership.

Then we have the example of Fred Hampton, a known assassination by the FBI, demonstrating the willingness of elements in the power structure to actually kill radical leadership. And Earth Firster leaders Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, blown up in a car and almost framed for doing it to themselves by the FBI, in the end fully exonerated. These examples are very interesting because the facts were exposed, but no one was held accountable and the cases did not become universally known as a result - evidence of a whole culture in denial.

Next, the current political-historical context, going back to at least Dec. 2000. Hmm: Election stolen. Bush Admin said to be near failure after a few months. Republicans lose the Senate after one of their own defects to the other side. Reports detailing mechanics of stolen election about to be issued by a consortium of the leading corporate media. Enron scandal with ties to major administration figures a mere incoming blip on the radar.

Suddenly there is a huge and mysterious terror attack, after which the Bush Admin moves with great speed to revolutionize everything in American life all at once and prepares a war of aggression against the objections of almost all other countries in the world. Dissent is declared unpatriotic, though still technically legal. The White House declares everyone must "watch what you say." The Vice-President's wife leads an attempted ideological purge of critical voices in the media and academia.

A second terror attack, on the heels of the first, is directed specifically at the Democratic senators Daschle and Leahy, precisely the two leaders who by their formal positions sit at the levers best-placed to mount an opposition to the ongoing coup and the USA PATRIOT Act (which was passed in the same month as the anthrax attacks).

A year passes. The Senate and House are finally ready to hold public hearings on the original big terror attack, after many delays forced by the administration. During the investigation, the FBI sends agents to the senators on the investigating committee and demands they take polygraph tests, to determine who may have leaked a report. This is an unprecedented act by an agency of the executive (which is under investigation by the legislature at the time) against the legislature.

In the month before Wellstone dies, the Senate votes on the Iraq resolution. At one point, Bush/Cheney attack Senate Democrats as active homeland security risks, due to their opposition to the Iraq resolution. Soon after, the Daschle/Gephardt opposition collapses, but Wellstone votes against the resolution. He becomes known as the most prominent voice for peace in the Senate. He is the hero of the Democratic left wing. He is the only senator running for re-election to have cast his vote against the Iraq invasion; the other 22 nay votes are not up for election in 2002.

In the ongoing campaign, Wellstone has been designated the GOP's number-one target for (political) elimination. Millions of dollars in political advertisements against him flood into the state, bought by a mysterious new Republican group. I'm definitely not pointing to them as suspects, but it does show the atmosphere, the felt importance on the right of getting Wellstone at all costs.

Two weeks before Wellstone is killed, during a series of sniper attacks in DC, FBI issues a "warning from a Guantanomo informant" to Senators to be careful on the golf course, since Qaeda is said to have planned to shoot a Senator while he golfs. This sounds like nothing that would interest Qaeda in the least, and a lot like not-too-subtle threat from the executive that Senators had better show some conformity.

Eleven days before Minnesota votes, Wellstone is killed in plane crash. If it had happened the next day, under Minnesota law his name would still be on the ballot and absentee votes for Wellstone mailed in before the death would count. Now they won't.

Hmmmmmmm... Threats to the Senate, then a Senator dies. Am I pointing at the admin? As a suspect for a possible Hypothesis 2, yes. That doesn't rule out other suspects, and Hypothesis 1 is self-evidently not out of the question. Just looking a little bit too politically convenient for words.

Now we come to real nub. If Hypothesis 1, Wellstone's death is a tragedy but the fight goes on.

If Hypothesis 2, Wellstone's death is a watershed in the ongoing coup.

Unless Hypothesis 2 is the work of a lone wingnut, of course, which is again not impossible but extremely unlikely given the sudden nature of Wellstone's trip. An assassination would have required a monitoring effort and logistics, to get to the target plane, to position in time. (Whether done by physical sabotage, bomb, electronic means from the ground, etc.)

Perhaps it is the work of a group of wingnuts who want to give an anonymous gift to their Great Leader? Let us recall how the mafia does this kind of thing: someone higher-up lets it be known that it would be judged good and beautiful (“Can no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”). Someone lower-down gets the hint, or decides to take their own initiative. The higher-ups see what happens, and thinking of it as a good thing decide not to ask any questions.

In any Hypothesis 2 scenario, I wish to emphasize that Wellstone personally is the target, not the election per se. He was set to win, and his successor has an excellent chance thanks to the sympathy factor, which the assassins would also know to expect. (NOTE, 2007: ha ha.)

Conclusion:

We can't know, but we must speak openly. This calls for an investigation broader than what the NTSB is going to provide, with its mandate limited to finding out a physical cause for the plane crash, without considering any of the above as relevant. Since any saboteurs will presumably know what they are doing, and since whoever hired such a saboteur may have the means of influencing the investigation, the chance of discovering possible foul play is near zero as long as Hypothesis 2 and the political-historical context is not considered.

We don't know, and without openness about the above, no report no matter how apparently scientific can settle the question.

On CNN, Patrick Leahy was in tears.

***********

(CNN) -- This is a list of prominent politicians killed in plane crashes in recent years:

October 16, 2000: Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan (D). Carnahan, his son and an aide were killed when their small plane crashed in bad weather in Missouri. According to Reuters, Sen. Paul Wellstone's death was eerily similar to the circumstances surrounding the October 2000 plane crash death of another Democratic Senate hopeful, Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan. His plane crashed in bad weather in that state killing him shortly before that year's election. He was elected after his death and his widow was appointed to take his seat.

<1999: JFK Jr., who held no office but was high up in the Democratic pantheon.>

April 3, 1996: U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. A U.S. Air Force jetliner carrying Brown and American business executives crashed into a mountain in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.

April 19, 1993: South Dakota Gov. George Mickelson (R). Mickelson died along with seven others when a state-owned airplane slammed into a silo during a rainstorm in Iowa.

April 4, 1991: Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz (R). According to AP: A fiery plane-helicopter collision 11 years ago killed U.S. Sen. H. John Heinz III and showered flames on children in a playground. Heinz, a three-term Republican and heir to the Heinz food fortune, died along with the two pilots of his chartered plane and two pilots in the helicopter who were attempting to see if the plane's front landing gear was down and locked in place. The plane's captain had radioed that an instrument light failed to confirm the gear was in place.

April 5, 1991: Texas Sen. John Tower (R). Texas Sen. John Tower, his daughter and 21 other people, including NASA astronaut Manley "Sonny" Carter, Jr., were killed in a commuter plane crash near Brunswick, Georgia.

August 13, 1989: Mississippi Rep. Larkin Smith (R). Pilot error in hazy conditions was ruled the probable cause of the plane crash that killed U.S. Rep. Larkin Smith and his pilot, according to a federal report. According to AP: The National Transportation Safety Board report indicated that pilot Chuck Vierling, who was not rated to fly on instruments, probably lost control after encountering conditions that required them. Vierling, 58, of Gulfport had expressed concern about the haziness before leaving, the report said. Vierling had flown Smith to Hattiesburg on August 13. On the return flight to Gulfport, the Cessna 152 crashed into woods near New Augusta in southeastern Mississippi.

August 7, 1989: Texas Rep. Mickey Leland (D). Rep. Mickey Leland, a Texas Democrat who chaired the House Select Committee on Hunger, killed when plane crashes during a trip to inspect relief efforts in Ethiopia.

September 1, 1983: Georgia Rep. Larry McDonald (D). McDonald was killed when Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Russian fighter.

August 3, 1976: Missouri Rep. Jerry Litton (D). Litton was killed along with his family in a plane crash in the northwest part of the state on the evening he won the Missouri's Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He was en route to a victory celebration.February 14, 1975: California Rep. Jerry Pettis (R). Pettis died when his plane crashed into a mountain near Beaumont, California. His wife, Shirley N. Pettis Roberson, replaced in the House five days later. "People come up to you, with little pieces of memorabilia about your husband, and they mean to show their deep regret in losing him," Pettis Roberson said in a telephone interview from her home in California. "I had to steel myself against tears, because I thought if I cried now, I would cry forever."

October 16, 1972: House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, D-Louisiana and Rep. Nick Begich, D-Alaska: Both were killed when their plane disappeared over Alaska.

December 8, 1972: Rep. George W. Collins, Illinois (D). Collins was killed when a United Airlines jetliner plane crashed on approach to Chicago's Midway Airport. Forty-four others also were killed. Collins' widow, Cardiss, succeeded her husband in the House.


********FOUND ANOTHER LIST

Here we go, this corrects my statement above that it seems to hit Senators (100) a lot more often than Reps (435). Both have died in crashes:

Rep. Thomas Hale Boggs. 1972.
Rep. Nicholas Joseph Begich. 1972.
(ABOVE IS THE SAME FLIGHT: ALASKA AIR)

Rep. George Washington Collins. 1972.
(DOROTHY HUNT, WIFE OF E.HOWARD HUNT, WAS ON THIS PLANE: UA at MIDWAY, IL.)

Rep. Jerry Lyle Pettis. 1975.
Rep. Jerry Lon Litton. 1976.
Rep. Ralph Frederick Beermann. 1977.
(ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE ABOVE 3 CASES?)

Rep. Lawrence Patton McDonald. 1983.
(KAL 007)

Senatorial candidate Richard D. Obenshain. 1978.
Jim Waltermire, secretary of state of Montana. 1988.
(ANYONE KNOW?)

Arnold Lewis Raphel, US Ambassador to Pakistan. 1988.
(THIS WAS ON THE CRASH OF ZIA, DICTATOR OF PAKISTAN, RUMORED TO BE A HIT-JOB FROM INSIDE THE COUNTRY/ISI.)

Rep. Mickey Leland. 1989.
Rep. Larkin I. Smith. 1989.
(ANYONE KNOW ABOUT THESE GUYS?)

Senator Henry John Heinz III. 1991.
John Tower, defeated in nomination for secretary of defense. 1991.
(ON TWO CONSECUTIVE DAYS & THESE ARE THE GUYS WITH THE BEST GOODS ON BUSH)

Gov. George Mickelson. 1993.

Ron Brown, US secretary of commerce. 1996.

State Rep. Cecil Weeding. 1998.

Former State Rep. Grover Robinson. 2000.
Former State Senator Thomas Allgood. 2000.
Former State Rep. Charles Yates. 2000.
(APPARENTLY SAME PLANE?)

Gov. Mel Carnahan. 2000.

Senator Paul Wellstone. 2002.

Actually, we have only two active Sens. on this list, Heinz and Wellstone.

Now it would prove nothing more than any other statistical approach, but if someone could really do it properly, I would be curious: How does the death rate of *actively-serving* Senators and Reps (a fixed population of 535 at all times) from airplane accidents compare to the overall death rate of frequent flyers?

How do we define "frequent flyers"? How much do these guys fly anyway, compared to certain classes of business people, rich people, etc.?

This is probably beyond the reach of any survey data, of either Senators or airline customers.

And how does it compare to the death rate of politicians from assassinations? Oops, how do we define the source group?

My point is, statistical arguments are useless here. But all three: frequent flyer death, politician death in air accident, and assassination -- have happened. Plenty.

[seemslikeadream]

1. kick

so I could find it!

[JackRiddler]

2. Why thank you! Recommends also welcome...

Long posts do tend to sink, but maybe we can get the debunker brigade to keep this afloat with insults.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Would you like me to insult you?

[JackRiddler]

5. If you can get me a seat alongside her? Yes.

Or is that you?!

[malaise]

3. Great post

K & R

[JackRiddler]

6. Thanks mucho!

[Rex]

7. Very nice.

This wouldn't be the first time someone tried to assassinate PW. He nearly got blown apart in Colombia.

[JackRiddler]

8. Blown apart? Report says he was "fumigated"

http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/22/22013.html

[Rex]

9. I believe it was during the Clinton years.

[truedelphi]

10. He was fumigated in Colombia the year before his plane went down

And John Judge says that fumigation led to his multiple Sclerosis, but his staff our of Minneapolis told me that he had MS prior to the fumigation.

[Judi Lynn]

24. There was another occassion in Barrancabermeja when a bomb was found on a road

where Wellstone's car was scheduled to travel:

Published on Saturday, December 2, 2000 by the Associated Press
Senator Paul Wellstone Takes The Lead Against 'Plan Colombia'
by Andrew Selsky

BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia (AP) - Hard-eyed men with Uzis stood guard as Sen. Paul Wellstone stepped out of a helicopter and into a bulletproof car and drove to a meeting with human rights activists. Hours earlier, police said they discovered a bomb along the airport road.
U.S. and Colombian authorities Friday downplayed the possibility that Wellstone and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson, who accompanied the Minnesota Democrat, were the intended targets of the bomb. Their visit marked the first time a U.S. lawmaker or ambassador had come to the deadliest town in all the Americas - a sweltering cluster of cinderblock homes on the banks of the muddy Magdalena River.

There was heavy security for the U.S. officials during their three-hour visit Thursday. But Barrancabermeja's 195,000 residents have no such protection: this year alone, 470 of them have been slain in politically motivated attacks, human rights workers say. Massacres are commonplace, and the killers are rarely caught.

Wellstone said he made the perilous journey to show support for the human rights activists, who face immense risk.

``I don't know whether I was targeted, but I certainly know that the human rights activists are targeted,'' Wellstone told an airport news conference on his return to Minneapolis on Friday.
(snip)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/120200-01.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bomb discovered in Colombia before visit of U.S. senator, ambassador

U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone

December 1, 2000
Web posted at: 12:41 p.m. EST (1741 GMT)

From staff and wire reports

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Police in Colombia said Friday they had discovered a roadside bomb outside a town hours before a U.S. senator and U.S. ambassador were to visit.

Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Democrat from Minnesota, and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson were the likely targets, Police Col. Jose Miguel Villar said.

However, a U.S. State Department official in Washington said Patterson told department officials by telephone that she did not see it as an assassination attempt. Another official, also asking for anonymity, added that it is not unusual for such devices to be found in Barrancabermeja, considering the town's reputation for violence.

Villar said officers found two shrapnel-wrapped land mines alongside the road leading from Barrancabermeja's airport into the town just hours before Wellstone and Patterson were scheduled to arrive on Thursday.
(snip)

Villar said police had not confirmed that Wellstone and Patterson were the targets, but said blasts from the devices, each carrying a 3-kilogram (6.6-pound) explosive charge, would have been severe.

"If the bomb had gone off, it could have caused immense damage," he said. "It would have spread shrapnel over a wide area and could have taken out 10 or 15 people."
(snip)

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/12/01/colombia.wellstone.03/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Associated Press
December 1, 2000
Roadside Bomb Found in Colombia Before Visit by U.S. Senator and Ambassador

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Police discovered a roadside bomb
outside a town hours before a U.S. senator and U.S. ambassador were
to visit, a Colombian police commander said Friday.

Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson
were the likely targets, Police Col. Jose Miguel Villar said.

But in Washington, a U.S. government official who spoke on condition of
anonymity said it was not yet clear that the target was the
Wellstone-Patterson party.

Patterson told State Department officials by telephone that she did not
see it as an assassination attempt, a department official said. Another
State Department official added that it is not unusual for such devices to
be found in Barrancabermeja, considering the town's reputation for
violence.

Hours before the two U.S. officials flew into Barrancabermeja on
Thursday, police discovered two shrapnel-wrapped land mines alongside
the road leading from the airport to the town and arrested a suspected
rebel, Villar said.

The land mines each carried a 6.6-pound explosive charge, were
attached to cables and a detonator and were ready to be set off, Villar
said in a phone interview from Barrancabermeja, 155 miles north of
Bogota, the capital.

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/colombia/roadside.htm

[truedelphi]

11. Heinz and Tower - those deaths seem spooky to me.

Get the goods on Bush - you die.

[RufusTFirefly]

14. Regarding Tower

Here's some reckless speculation on the death of John Tower.

Tower headed the famous Tower Commission, which basically vindicated Nazi profiteer Sen. Prescott Bush's son Poppy with regards to the Iran/Contra affair. (He was "out of the loop.")

Tower's payback was supposed to have been a plum position as Sec. of Defense. Unfortunately, John's drinking and womanizing scuttled his confirmation. That left the BFEE in a quandary. Tower had upheld his part of the bargain, but they were unable to fulfill theirs. What to do? What to do?

[scarletwoman]

12. Thanks for the re-post. I remember it from those dark days.

I long ago stopped having the energy or desire to argue the case anymore, so I've simply avoided Wellstone/assassination threads for years. It was all so painful and shocking back then that I still can barely stand to post about it.

It wasn't just the arguments over the plane crash, it was the whole Wellstone Memorial crap on top of it all. I was at the Memorial, I know what happened there and how it got unbelievably distorted almost immediately.

All I have to say now is something that I also said back then. If a plane crash like Wellstone's had happened to a popular opposition politician in, say, a Latin American country/Banana Republic/Third World dictatorship, I am quite sure that plenty of people would have NO problem at all with assuming that it was an assassination. It would probably the first thought to cross many peoples' minds upon hearing about it. They'd all nod sagely at the obviousness of it.

But somehow, since this happened HERE, it's taboo to harbor such thoughts that such a thing would ever happen in the U.S. There are no dark actors plotting political murders, just "lone nuts" and "accidents". There are no murderous powers in the shadows with the capability of arranging convenient deaths of those whom they consider their enemies, no murderous powers capable of covering their tracks after arranging convenient "accidents".

No, such things are just not possible in the bright and glorious and incorruptable United States, such things only happen elsewhere.

That is all I have to say.

sw

[LynzM]

31. Exactly.

So many of us have such a "holier than thou" attitude, I think it's part of what makes it easy for the BFEE and PNAC to keep pushing their agenda - nobody believes it, even when you show the evidence, even when you put it all out there. It's like living in an absurdity.

[scarletwoman]

90. It's American Exceptionalism -- stuff like that happens elsewhere, but never here.

I guess I'm basically an agnostic about Wellstone's plane crash. I believe that's it not at all unreasonable to consider the possibility that there could have been sabotage involved, that it was a deliberate assassination.

On the other hand, I am fully aware that there will NEVER be any hard evidence to prove such a scenario.

Ultimately, does it really matter? He's dead and gone no matter what caused the crash. And if it was a "black op", knowing for sure doesn't really affect the fact that there are evil people in power -- it would just be one more check mark on their already massive ledger of corruption and dirty dealings.

What disturbs me most is that so many people want to just shut the conversation down -- that so many people leap to attack the very idea that it might be a possibility.

What does it serve us to deny even the possibility?

sw

[FiveGoodMen]

32. "How dare you?" Bill Clinton would say.

[FiveGoodMen]

55. In case it wasn't clear, I was knocking the Clinton comment and not your post.

[scarletwoman]

88. Not to worry, I got it.

:hi:

[scarletwoman]

13. kick -- since I've already recommended. And thank you again. (nt)

[dailykoff]

15. Moral of the story:

For best effect, kill the entire family, especially the wives, who can be troublesome if left alive.

[JackRiddler]

16. Two sons survived...

They got a smear from Jesse "The Body" and RW press for being "political" at the public memorial (as though Wellstone would have had it otherwise).

[dailykoff]

18. So did Teddy.

No doubt heads rolled.

[inchhigh]

42. Funeral

In wonder how much the dust up overt he funeral was responsible for Coleman beating Mondale. My Republican Father In Law couldn't sto[p talking about how tasteless the crowd was at his funeral. The Dems really got smeared by the media for a few days right before the election.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

45. First of all--it wasn't a funeral

The funeral was held at Temple Israel in Minneapolis previously.

Second, how could the Democrats have controlled what a crowd of over 10,000 people did? The party had nothing to do with planning the event.

Third, the Republicanite spin doctors outright LIED. (Fancy that, a Republican lying!) They said that the captions on the Jumbotron had told the crowd to boo Trent Lott. In fact, a small group of people booed when he walked in, and the closed captioning reported that.

It was the Republican spin machine in high gear, even to the point of one of the right-wing newspaper columnists assuming the persona of Paul Wellstone and scolding the Democrats for "politicizing" his memorial service.

The worst part of it was--and here were the Dems doing their usual fine job of shooting themselves in the foot--they APOLOGIZED for a memorial service that they had had no part in planning.

Which immediately said to the naive voters: "See, the right-wing spin doctors were right."

[dflprincess]

56. And the right wing smear had already started in the time it took my friends and I

to walk from Williams Arena to where the car was parked - and we weren't parked very far away.

The wingnuts watched the memorial just looking for anything to whine about. If hadn't been Rick Kahn's speech, it would have been the one Tom Harkin gave.

[rainy]

86. They had to change the discussion from the 10s of thousands who mourned

to faked outrage and the media whores went along for the ride as usual.

[Nostradammit]

17. Thanks for this

Kick for the Wellstones.

[me b zola]

19. k&r

[puebloknot]

20. Thanks for this work, and a stirring of the memory of Wellstone's death...

...and the doubts about it that linger still.

[Usrename]

21. Wellstone was the immovable object.

:patriot:

It's very difficult to imagine that we would be where we are now if he were still alive.

:cry:

[JackRiddler]

22. Two prominent Republicans killed in separate plane crashes on consecutive days

FROM CNN:

April 4, 1991: Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz (R). According to AP: A fiery plane-helicopter collision 11 years ago killed U.S. Sen. H. John Heinz III and showered flames on children in a playground. Heinz, a three-term Republican and heir to the Heinz food fortune, died along with the two pilots of his chartered plane and two pilots in the helicopter who were attempting to see if the plane's front landing gear was down and locked in place. The plane's captain had radioed that an instrument light failed to confirm the gear was in place.
April 5, 1991: Texas Sen. John Tower (R). Texas Sen. John Tower, his daughter and 21 other people, including NASA astronaut Manley "Sonny" Carter, Jr., were killed in a commuter plane crash near Brunswick, Georgia.

FROM JACKRIDDLER:

So, these are the two examples most often brought up to show that Republicans get killed in plane crashes, too.

How interesting. Heinz was ranking on the banking committee at the same time, I strangely recall, that Bush and son Neil (Jeb too, but not as prominently) were at the center of a partial exposure of the largest plunder/money laundering operation in all history until then (called "the Savings and Loan scandal" and BCCI).

Tower had headed the first Iran/Contra investigative commission, which produced a tepid report to set the tone for the larger cover up of that particular criminal complex. After the Senate rejected him for defense secretary, he reportedly went off to write a book on I/C.

Hmmm... two Republicans, one of whom (Tower) has all the goods anyone would need to wipe out the Bush admin. Another one (Heinz), with presidential ambitions, who sits on the committee that would have the other set of goods.

The two hold levers with which they could topple Bush. They crash on consecutive days. Interesting.

Wonder if Tower and Heinz were friends?

[DrDebug]

41. There's ICIC which links Iran-Contra and BCCI leading to Salem bin Laden's crash

That one is called International Credit and Investment Corporation of Grand Caymans.

From there it gets more complicated, because that entity has been created by the same entities which previously created Skyway Aircraft which was a joint partnership by George W. Bush's drinking buddy and fellow AWOLer James Bath and somebody called ... Salem bin Laden.

Now Salem bin Laden's aircraft crashed on May 29, 1988 in San Antonio, Texas... Oh yeah, he was also a partner in the Carlyle Group together with a person named George H.W. Bush. Shafig bin Laden, another brother of Osama, replaced him at the Carlyle Group and both Shafig and George sr. happened to be in a meeting on the morning of 9/11 and happily watched that day's event in their mutual company... ( http://www.denverpost.com/rodriguez/ci_4319898 )

A Wolf in Sheikhs Clothing:
Bush Business Deals with 9 Partners of bin Laden’s Banker

by Martin J. Rivers
Geocities, 15 March 2004
www.globalresearch.ca 27 March 2004

(...)

It should be noted that several unusual business behaviors of Mahfouz’s Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd. demonstrated a pattern reminiscent of money laundering. First, within a month of its incorporation, the temporary board at Cotopax named Bush’s friend James Bath as company president, changed the company name to Skyways and then resigned en mass, leaving Bath as a sole director. Second, the Cayman Islands are an effective tax-shelter and haven for banking secrets. Third, one of the original subscribers to Cotopax, a company called Cayhaven Corporate Services, Ltd., was also a subscriber to “I.C., Inc.”. In reality, IC Inc. was the same entity as ICIC, which is the International Credit and Investment Corporation of Grand Caymans, termed BCCI’s “bank-within-a-bank” in the Kerry Committee report. Thus, James Bath’s Skyways Aircraft Leasing is an enterprise related to Mahfouz’s BCCI via “IC Inc.”.

Curiously, Mahfouz’s “IC Inc.”, the company related to George W. Bush’s friend James Bath, was found by investigators to be at the very center of a chart drawn by Oliver North, in North’s own White House safe, that showed the private banking network supporting the Iran-Contra operation.

Finally, in 1992, a division of the U.S. Department of Treasury, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, along with the FBI, reviewed the now forgotten accusations that George W. Bush's friend, James R. Bath, guided money to Houston from Saudi investors who wanted to influence U.S. policy under the Reagan and Bush administrations.

(...)

Original (expired) link: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MAR403A.html
Msgboard copy at: http://www.safehaven.com/forums_showmessage.cfm?id=2843

So the common theme between Iran Contra and BCCI is a can of worm which would lead to much weird Bush stuff... and much more small plane crashes... Coincidence, right? What are the odds...

[Imagevision]

23. After JFK - MLK - and RFK it seems accidents were a better choice for eliminations!?!

[JNelson6563]

25. They whacked him, those bastards

They make me wish there really was a hell.

Julie

[rainy]

87. They killed him no doubt there.

[cali]

26. Not much here but rank speculation

and an awkward attempt to form a pattern- and lots of flaws in logic, but really, why bother? If CTs without foundation, float your boat, have a fun little regatta.

[JackRiddler]

33. Not much in your reply at all

except for a few perfunctory magic phrases of denial that stopped working long ago.

In the midst of a coup and launching a war of aggression on the corpses of 3,000 New Yorkers exploited for that purpose, a regime imposing the legal forms of fascism and issuing threats against senators happens to see its most annoying and hated (if not necessarily effective) thorn-in-the-side go down in flames, right after he is the only one up for re-election who votes against their war - and to you there are no grounds for suspicion it might not be an accident.

At least yibbehobba is straighforward in remaining refreshingly ad hominem with a completely unrelated schoolyard insult, rather than pretending he has any input to make.

[kenfrequed]

37. Nope

And that is typical of this particular responder.

[cali]

43. not going to play your little games, Mr. Riddler

I posted substantive comments about this on the now locked thread from last night. Feel free to read them.

[JackRiddler]

44. Thanks for the kick...

Where's this locked thread, or your "substantive" comments? If ya don't link to it, it's kind of pointless to refer to it.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

70. In that case, I have a suggestion. Don't post. Merely a suggestion, of course. nt

[cali]

83. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your "concern". n/t

[Parche]

40. And

You know what really happened?

You sound like that other poster that starts with a K, who is a pilot, who degrades and slams
other posters without knowing things about them.
Although I am not an actual pilot, my history as an airline/airplane enthusiast is 30years
One of my good friends was the chief of the tower here, and the head of the FAA Flight Data
Center in DC.

It sounds like you have already made your mind up...................

:hi:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

27. For fuck's sake...

...go out and find a girlfriend or something.

[motocicleta]

96. Pot ...

meet kettle.

[Grateful for Hope]

28. K&R

Thanks, Jack.

[notadmblnd]

29. Almost 8 am and they still haven't arrived

must have tired themselves out last night with all that name calling.

on edit: I was wrong, one popped up about 6. Still, I have to wonder why they are so angry? Even if we are "stupid" for believing in CTs, what do they care? Can't they just pass up the thread? Their self rightous, arrogant, know it all attitudes make me want to :puke:

[Freddie Stubbs]

30. One thing which has never been proven: Assinstion of an American politician by airplane crash

[FiveGoodMen]

34. And what do you conclude from that?

[Whisp]

35. K&r, thanks, Jack. nt

[kenfrequed]

36. A bit underdeveloped

Personally I have always found the timing of Wellstones death to be very suspicious. The fact of the matter is that he was leading Coleman by a good 7 points less than two weeks prior to the election. It took a tragedy and the most concerted national right wing spin effort I have ever seen to give Coleman the election. As well as the convenient nullification of any absentee ballots that would have gone to Wellstone.

The circumstances were odd enough and the cause has never actually been established. So I think after this long it is fair to consider various kinds of interference.

As a Minnesotan I want to know what happened to my senator.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

46. The timing was so convenient that even my 90-year-old great aunt

told me without prompting that she thought Wellstone was assassinated.

People in Oregon who knew that I was from Minnesota came up to me and asked whether I thought Wellstone had been assassinated.

You can't make doubts go away by shouting them down.

[onenote]

48. the timing was suspicious?

He was campaigning and flying a lot. As for the polls, the polls were all over the lot. Yes there were polls showing Wellstone leading, but there also were polls showing him trailing. And none of the polls, to my knowledge, showed any candidate with over 50 percent. And in light of the aftermath of the Carnahan plane crash, where his widow won the election, what certainty was there that whomever was nominated to take Wellstone's place wouldn't have won the election?

[defendandprotect]

102. Right . . . there are also questions about the Mondale/Coleman outcome ---

[cali]

66. Have you read the 75 page NTSB report? n/t

[kenfrequed]

79. Actually I have

The primary possibilities were pilot error combined with weather though neither were adequately supported.

[cali]

84. And your qualifications to make that statement are?

Are you a meterologist? A pilot? An engineer?

[kenfrequed]

105. The report itself

Seemed to suggest it was uncertain and that they provided no tangible evidence to support that theory.

[Basileus Basileon]

97. What extra information would you have wanted?

What specific data would have adequately supported the conclusions?

[T.Ruth2power]

38. K&R

n/t

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

39. Thank you.

Thank you.

[onenote]

47. You admit that they all could be accidents and you doubt that they're all assissinations

Yet the only evidence that you have that any of them was an assasination (let alone any particular one) is that the person died was a person of influence. Well, since there is no conclusive evidence that any one of these was an assasination and there is no reason to think that they were all assasinations, it seems that, more likely than nto, they were all accidents.

As for your statement that "Over a time period of 35 years, we would not expect to see zero political assassinations by aviation sabotage in a country of 270 million people, especially given that the method has been used in many other countries' I guess you could say the same thing about assasination by means of an attack using hand grenades and an assault rifle. That's how Sadat was assasinated and yet in a country of 270 million people, no one has ever assasinated a leading political figure hear with such an attack. Moreover, no one in the past 35 years has been assasinated in this country by their personal body guards in an attack conducted openly and in front of witnesses, as was the case with the assassination of Indira Ghandi. Does that mean that there really have been attacks like that but they've been secretly covered up? Or maybe the fact that out of all of the world's political leaders the fact that there are a handful of suspected (but unproven) assasinations by aviation doesn't prove squat about whether any political leaders in the US have ever been intentionally killed that way.

[JackRiddler]

50. No, it doesn't prove...

Especially the timing with developments in the U.S. at that time (as detailed) establish the context in which we should absolutely consider assassination - and investigate it, which the investigators did not even conceive of doing. This should be automatic when any political figure is killed.

By the way, why a 35-year limit on assassinations involving bodyguards? I believe there may have been one in 1967. And another one probably involving the complicity (though not the direct action) of bodyguards in 1963.

[onenote]

53. "why a 35 year limit"?

I was just quoting your OP. You tell me.

[SidDithers]

49. So it may have been assassination...

and your only evidence to suggest that is that Wellstone was important, so death would be impactful?

Small planes with famous people crash all the time

How about Cory Lidle? Payne Stewart? Buddy Holly? Richie Valens? Otis Redding? Ronnie Van Zant? JFK Jr.?

Or any of the other celebrity frequent flyers listed here:
http://www.check-six.com/lib/Famous_Missing/Celebrity_Plane_Crashes.htm

Wellstone's death was tragic, but without real evidence to suggest otherwise, I'll stick with accidental.

Sid

[JackRiddler]

51. And what would constitute evidence...

if the site is sealed and the hypothesis is verboten? The NTSB report came to an equally faith-based conclusion of pilot error = no evidence remaining after the fact.

How about JFK? RFK? MLK? Wallace? (Leaving aside authorship questions: assassinations happen in the US).

Zia, Dag Hammarskjold, Torrijos... assassinations by air-crash happen, too.

(BTW, Cory Lidle was killed by Steinbrenner, obviously. --Sorry, is that in bad taste? Anti-Yankees bile, I suppose.)

[onenote]

57. conclusive evidence that zia, hammarskjold, torrijos were assassinated?

[JackRiddler]

58. Probably none

Air crashes are a great way to do it, from the perspective of those who can control the investigation. You're right, Noriega is clean as a whistle on Torrijos, the ISI equally so on Zia. You can find plenty of circumstantial case-building on both, if you wish, but we're stuck with informed speculation or as coincidence theorists in a world where nothing ever happens by intent. Hooray!

[dflprincess]

60. "Assassinations happen in the U.S."

Yes, but they're only committed by crazy lone gunmen. You know that our leaders - especially the current regime - has far too much integrity to off a political adversary. Why, the next crazy thing you'll be saying is that the U.S. would start an unprovoked war and, not satisfied with just one war, the vice-president might just decide he'd like a nuclear confrontation with yet another country.

Oh, you left off Rep. Hale Boggs'(D-LA) plane disappearing in Alaska after Boggs, a member of the Warren Commission, made it clear he didn't buy the Commission's report.

[defendandprotect]

103. Boggs did more than that -- he also made a speech calling Hoover black mailer ---

[TrogL]

52. Here we go again

Yes, I'm well known as a participant in the Wellstone threads of old.

Here's my resume:

I AM a conspiracy theorist. I'm into RRR (see my website below), LIHOP, I'm willing to listen to MIHOP but I don't think they've made their case - yet. I'd be for twin-towers if the physics looked better and it wasn't so full of logical fallacies.

I've studied Chemistry and Physics at University level - entry level courses. My father was a chemistry teacher.

I've also studied formal logic (part of a University course on another topic) and symbolic logic (computer systems).

I had aspirations of being a pilot. I've had a few hours on stick in a variety of piston aircraft. I've certainly studied the course materials, just couldn't come up with the $10,000 for the lessons etc.

I've been in plenty of small aircraft in icing conditions. I live in the Great White North. For awhile my job required me to fly to out-of-the-way locations to service stuff. I usually ended up in the co-pilot's chair. In the spring and fall pilots like someone sitting co-pilot for one important reason - watching for flocks of Canada Geese. A bird strike from one of them is pretty much fatal. When not doing that, I was yacking with the pilot - usually about flying. Given conditions, we talked a lot about icing.

I've spent plenty of time in King Air's. For those flights, I was usually piggy-backing somebody else's trip. I wasn't playing co-pilot because those aircraft require two licensed pilots so I'd be in back but often they'd give me a headset if I was accompanying a load of fish or something. My work would be finished in a couple of hours and I'd spent the rest of the time sitting around an empty airport talking to, you guessed it, the pilots about, you guessed it, flying and, you guessed it, icing.

I've flown with excellent pilots, good pilots and pilots so bad I was telling THEM how to fly the plane 'cause they obviously didn't have a clue ("Um....errr...isn't that the ground coming up?" "Huh, what? Oh, right." ). One guy got us into heavy fog and *I* had to do the radios for the ILS approach 'cause he'd gotten addicted to GPS and forgotten everything else and his GPS was on the fritz. I've been with pilots so lost they didn't know what city they were in, what direction they were flying or what kind of aircraft they were in. I've had pilots land downwind with the tower screaming at them. I was listening on the scanner one time when some asshat tried to land a Hercules at a muni airport - wrong airport, wrong runway, wrong direction, wrong city and a runway that would barely take a Cessna 172, nevermind that monster. I've seen pilots exhausted, bored, depressed, senile - I swear one was drunk and/or stoned. Pilots are not equal by any stretch of the imagination.

An aircraft cockpit is a huge workload; flying the plane, dealing with instruments, figuring out where you are, talking with the tower, worrying about the weather, looking for other aircraft or Canada Geese, interacting with co-pilot, interruptions from passengers, dealing with your own issues (eg. nausea), juggling charts, checklists, flight plans, log books...

Enough about that. Here's my position on the Wellstone crash. I'm doing this from memory and it's been awhile so bear with me.

I am totally in agreement that, if there weren't other issues, it's a suspicious looking set of circumstances. The problem is, most people discount the other issues without fully addressing them.

There's two main issues - pilot error and weather.

I'll address weather first.

It was not perfect flying weather - get over it. It was cloudy and yucky enough to concern the pilots. Lots more about that later.

There was not sufficient conditions for icing on the ground aka. sleet. There was sufficient conditions for icing airborne. Maybe not much icing but it doesn't take much icing to mess up an aircraft's handling, and dealing with ice can be a major distraction in an already chaotic workload.

These were not the greatest pilots in the world. The great pilots are flying 747's. These guys have been in the business for years and they're still on puddle jumpers. They've done poorly in their evaluations. One is downright paranoid about icing.

Pilot error is the number one reason for crashes, usually 'cause the pilots got distracted by something stupid. One crew augered in a passenger jet 'cause they were upset about a blown light bulb. Go read the NTSB crash reports. Pilots have their good days and their bad days and on their bad days they do remarkably stupid things.

So we've got mediocre pilots on a late flight in crappy weather. One guy's paranoid about icing and conditions are bad enough to make that possible enough to be a distraction. If it actually does occur, or he thinks it occurs or hallucinates that it occurs - one more strike. These are perfect conditions for one or both pilots to lose their spatial sense and fly a perfectly good airplane into the ground with nothing more than an "ah, shit" at the end.

I'll respond to the top level post in a separate entry.

[dflprincess]

92. Just one thing,

it wasn't a late flight, it was a mid-morning flight.

[TrogL]

100. Like I said - I'm doing this from memory

Doesn't change my position. The crash I noted somewhere else in this thread occured in daytime.

[Nye Bevan]

54. Bush and his cronies are a bunch of incompetent buffoons

who screw up everything they get involved in, whether it's Iraq, Katrina or the economy. That's pretty much the conventional wisdom on this board (since it's pretty much true). Except when it comes to MIHOP and small plane assassinations of political opponents. Then all of a sudden they become ruthless, brilliant schemers who can develop and execute highly complex plots with no leaks, no whistle blowers, leaving no evidence, and attracting the suspicion only of a few posters on internet message boards.

That's very impressive cognitive dissonance. Chimp & co. can't even get away with firing a few US attorneys-- how could anyone think that they could pull off the assassination of a US senator?

[JackRiddler]

62. Why this excuse, over and over?

If Bush and his cronies are so incompetent, how is it they got EVERYTHING (almost, except for Social Security "reform") they wanted - including Iraq (the destruction of that nation being the point of the exercise) and Katrina (socially engineering the poor out of a city).

And Bush and his cronies don't do operations - they can pay for professionals to do that. Or they can pay for professionals who arrange the lower-level professionals, etc., and be far removed from dirty work.

[Basileus Basileon]

65. Because it's simply nuts.

They've been caught breaking the law repeatedly. They've failed at everything they've done. The only way you can make him look remotely competent at anything but applying political pressure is if you redefine all of his failures as successes.

His grand plan was not to fuck up Iraq, waste hundreds of billions of dollars, set back the progress of Mideast Americanization by 30 years, and be forever remembered as an incompetent fool. Nor was it to allow a major American city to be greatly damaged and in doing so push African-American voters away from the Republican party for another generation.

[JackRiddler]

67. They've been caught breaking the law? Really?

Tell me, who's serving time for it? Who's been held accountable?

What you have here is a theoretical "push the voters away for a generation" that the Democratic leadership in the Congress is busily pushing away by refusing to press any of their advantages or to get anyone for breaking the law.

It's nuts to imagine that the exposure of their "incompetence" in your eyes changes anything in the string of victories for their agenda they've pushed through against all odds, if you go back to 2000.

[Basileus Basileon]

71. You could rattle off any number of scandals they've been caught in,

and any number of lies they've been caught telling. There's evidence out the ass; never mind that the Democrats haven't gone after them for it. Where's the evidence with Wellstone? Hell, where's the one little bit of doubt that it didn't happen the way the NTSB said it did? Where's the evidence it wasn't just bad piloting?

They've had plenty of legislative successes, yes. They're good at cowing Democrats by suggesting that people won't like them if they don't play along. But--and I might be wrong here--I don't think we're referring to them forcing through an act of Congress killing Paul Wellstone. We're referring to a top-secret evil plot to kill him.

And given Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, Downing Street, yellowcake, Jessica Lynch, secret prisons, Plame, Abu Ghraib, torture memos, wiretapping, atty firings, stolen elections, bribed journalists, and fake press conferences...well, they're about as good at keeping things covered up as a porn star. If they can't keep an illegal relationship with one damn journalist secret, isn't it a bit much to be running around yelling that they're ordering assassinations and masterminding grand conspiracies?

[JackRiddler]

72. Don't you see the contradiction here?

"And given Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, Plame, wiretapping, atty firings, stolen elections, bribed journalists, and fake press conferences..." and IRAQ and the bonanza of plunder - trillions - they've cashed in through all this and so much more ... well, the conclusion I get from that is that they're willing to commit any crime, kill anyone, and have no doubt done much more than what's on your list without any exposure, in addition to the stuff they happen to get "caught" for but never get held accountable for.

Incompetence + Being rewarded for crime on mass scale = No remaining sense of limits

[Basileus Basileon]

74. Ah, I understand now.

Due to rampant leaks in this administration (caused by disillusioned bureaucrats), the Bush administration has been repeatedly caught in dubiously-legal abuses of power involving as little as one person. Their larger crimes have repeatedly been exposed simply through their sheer incompetence. Though they are competent at pushing legislation through congress, not one of their initiatives have been a success.

Therefore, they must be organizing lots of incredibly complex, incredibly illegal, little-benefit-and-would-probably-result-in-execution-if-uncovered schemes involving hundreds of people! Yeah, I see. I was totally wrong beforehand.

I'm sure the antics of the Keystone Kops prove to you that they're actually crack detectives and Olympic-caliber athletes.

[0rganism]

76. reminds me of Bartcop's aphorism about "mistakes"

(paraphrasing from memory)
"When people get rewarded for making a mistake, expect them to make that mistake over and over again."

[tnlurker]

59. I'll read this later

[Proud_Lefty]

61. A friend of mine had Wellstone as a professor in college

When she went back for the class reunion shortly after his death, everyone was talking about the crash. They said that Wellstone was called in Cheney's office before the vote on giving Bush authority to invade Iraq. Cheney told Wellstone that he wanted him to vote for this bill or he would suffer "gravely" for his failure to do so. Wellstone ignored him, voted against the bill and then mysteriously died in a plane crash. It was said that this made an incredible impact on everyone in congress - they knew what happened and that any of them could be next. I don't have any links on this, only hearsay second and third handed. However, it sure does explain why congress is so weak on expressly the most basic truths.

[JackRiddler]

64. Several Congress members, including one I spoke to...

Off the record, give full credence to the idea. They're as stuck as we are, in this case.

[Lilith Velkor]

95. I heard the same thing

Straight from the mouth of a US Senator.

Note to those who don't believe me: I don't care.

[cali]

68. you realize that 22 other Senators also voted against the IWR

right? And that there are dozens of plausible reasons why Congress is weak in certain areas- and they aren't weak in all areas; they've opposed this prez more than any other Congress has opposed any other prez, in over 50 years.

As for the anecdote about Wellstone and Cheney, I've heard various versions of it, but it really doesn't prove anything.

[Proud_Lefty]

73. No, it doesn't prove anything

Why are you so argumentative? I found the information quite interesting and thought others might as well. As I mentioned, I don't have solid back-up and wasn't presenting it that way. Just food for thought. Frankly though, I don't understand your comment "they've opposed this prez more than any other Congress has opposed any other prez, in over 50 years." I bet Bill Clinton would beg to differ on that.

[Basileus Basileon]

75. They have.

http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002576765.html

[Proud_Lefty]

81. I guess it's all a matter of perspective

While these figures could be accurate, congress under the Clinton administration went after Clinton with double barrels. Their participation in smear tactics and spins made their opposition appear much worse than our current congress places on Bush. How could the prior congress move for impeachment for one lie about Clinton's personal life that was none of our business in the first place when the current congress refuses to even consider it for the Bush administration who has intentionally lied us into a war, illegally spies on us, tortures and ignores the Geneva Convention, outs a CIA officer, and the list goes on and on. Also, regardless of all the bills congress has killed, Bush continues to get all the money he asks for in this war, sometimes more than what he asks, with no oversight whatsoever. What opposition?

[JackRiddler]

80. 22 other Senators - can you name another who was up for election in 2002?

As for your comment that "they've opposed this prez more than any other Congress has opposed any other prez, in over 50 years," this is so absurdly untrue and unreal - in fact, the absolute opposite of reality, name almost any other administration by comparison - that further response becomes superfluous.

[cali]

82. Look, that's not me saying it; it was a study done and widely

posted here a couple of weeks ago. How meaningful is it? I don't know, but I haven't done my own study, have you?

And no, off hand I don't know who else among the 22 was up for election that year, but I can almost guarantee you that several were.

I'll try and find the post with the study.

[Basileus Basileon]

98. Here you go.

http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002576765.html

[Basileus Basileon]

63. Couple things you might be missing here.

1. When you state "frequent flyer," you ignore the type of aircraft. A single-engine light aircraft piloted by someone with 500 hours is going to go down more often then a United 747-400 with a captain of 30 years' experience. Wellstone was flying on a small twin-engine prop plane (which, incidentally, the pilot had confided earlier that he was having difficulty flying).

2. When looking at the likelihood of death by accident, consider the following factors:

-Weather was poor.
-The co-pilot was rated "below average" in proficiency.
-The same co-pilot had been fired twice before for incompetence.
-The same co-pilot was cited for being frequently reminded to keep his hand on the throttle to avoid stalling.
-The pilot had a reputation for incompetence, and friends were urging him to retire.
-Three different co-pilots who had worked with Wellstone's pilot reported that he had a habit of allowing the co-pilot to do everything alone.
-The final radar readings showed the aircraft approaching stall speed.

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2003/AAR0303.pdf
http://web.archive.org/web/20030831180016/http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/5236353.htm
http://www.startribune.com/style/news/politics/wellstone/ntsb/252886.pdf

[TrogL]

69. Correlation is not causation

>Hypothesis 1, accident, is evaluated with the methods of the physical sciences, aviation, and also criminal forensics.

You've completely forgotten psychology - something I feel is a major factor in this accident.

>These methodologies necessarily use different standards of evidence and occur on seperate levels of reality. So there is no one "scientific method" we can apply.

Certainly there is - logic, specifically the exposure of logical fallacies.

>If it really mattered, here is how I would frame the statistical question:

>Which is likelier, based on all events to date:
>1. That a frequent flyer anywhere in the world will die in a commuter plane crash in a rural area during mildly poor weather conditions?
>2. That a politician on the senatorial level is assassinated anywhere in the world by the means of foul play directed against his airplane?

But that's not statistics. You even end with "My point is, statistical arguments are useless here."

However, I'm going to challenge your premises.

>1. That a frequent flyer anywhere in the world will die in a commuter plane crash in a rural area during mildly poor weather conditions?

This was not a commuter plane crash, unless you're calling a King Air a "commuter plane" - a term I've never heard before. Wellstone flew all over the damn place.

I have no idea what "a rural area" has to do with it. An airport is an airport no matter where it is. Rural airports are actually slightly easier to land at 'cause there's less buildings around. We had a crash in town here a number of years ago when somebody flew something similar to a King Air into a hospital building. Perfectly normal approach, pilot was communicating with the tower, then bam. He was killed in the crash, autopsy showed nothing particularly wrong (eg. drugs, heart problems) so it just went down to pilot error.

I already discussed the weather.


>Trying to estimate the probability of an accident is fairly useless, because there is no way to definitively define the terms of the event: What is "mildly bad" weather? How dangerous are different types of commuter planes?
Hey, "mildly bad" weather was your term - you define it. The weather conditions were well documented.

>How dangerous are different types of commuter planes?

The King Air has its fair share of problems but nothing drastic. Certainly they're a handfull to fly - fast, powerful - that's why there's two pilots.

>What is a "politician on the senatorial level"?

It's your term - you define it. Plane crashes are no respectors of authority or fame.

>Those who lean towards Hypothesis 2 might, among other steps, study the history of assassinations, to look for signs of consistency with the present case.

And there's the problem. Correlation is not causation - get over it.

Some cows eat grass.
My dog eats grass.
Therefore, my dog is a cow.

This is the fallacy of undivided middle. Conspiracy theories are full of them. That's my main objection to most of them.

Some plane crashes are assasinations.
Wellstone was killed in a plane crash.
Therefore it was an assasination.

That's the basic logic of your position. You've dressed it up a lot with motive and whatnot, but the basic logic applies - that there's a single correlation between plane crashes and assasinations.

EArlier this week we had a plane crash. A grandfather, his grandson and a business associate (of the grandfather presumably) crashed a twin-prop into the side of a mountain in perfect flying conditions. The 3-year-old grandson miraculously survived (or it was a damn good child carrier). By your logic, it MUST have been conspiracy, probably against the grandson.

The other big problem with your position is that it gives absolutely no explanation as to exactly how the plane crashed.

People would benefit by Wellstone's plane crashing.
Wellstone's plane crashed.
Therefore those people caused the crash.

Classic, classic fallacy of the undivided middle.

You probably remember, I've been over and over this with stickdog. (Whatever happened to him, anyway?) When pressed, he would come up with increasingly wierd explanations involving tampering with navigation beacons and all sorts of other crazy shit untterly unsupported by the facts of the matter.

To review, my position:

Crappy pilots(or even relatively good ones) crash planes, especially if distracted eg. by bad weather
Wellstone was in a plane with crappy pilots in crappy weather
Barring strong, good evidence to the contrary, it seems reasonable pilot error was the cause.

That does not rule out conspircy or assassination, it merely says it's unlikely. Hence one should not be shouting it from the rooftops without convincing proof. That "someone would benefit" is not proof.

[JackRiddler]

77. But that's not what I said.

This is what you say I said:

"Some plane crashes are assasinations.
Wellstone was killed in a plane crash.
Therefore it was an assasination."

I didn't. Change that to, "Therefore it should be investigated as a possible assassination."

I don't know, I did not say it was an assassination, and perhaps this is all an exercise in unknowability. Perhaps I just feel attached to because it upset me.

I'm not yelling anything from rooftops, by the way, and this is also an unfair characterization. Where else should one discuss these suspicions, if not here?

Here is something I did say:

"A coup d'etat was underway from 2000-2002 leading up to the launching of a war of aggression.
The administration was busy intimidating the legislature and looking to make examples of various kinds.
Therefore it should be investigated if Wellstone was made into such an example."

Otherwise, thanks for keeping it entirely civil, and mostly reasonable.

[TrogL]

101. Investigated by whom?

You've stated elsewhere in the thread that you don't trust the NTSB, the one body qualified to investigate plane crashes.

[JackRiddler]

104. Did I say I don't trust the NTSB?

I probably don't, when it has CIA veterans running investigations on plane crashes of senators. I trust the expertise, of course, but not necessarily the direction taken on potentially political cases, or the ability to withstand the pressure of political influence and dominant paradigms (such as: assassinations just don't happen here).

Pilot error is a no-risk conclusion, and conveniently unfalsifiable; to even voice a suspicion about assassination is the fast track to ruining your career.

In this case, even if you trust the NTSB, its taking the lead from the start with no other investigation says that a conception has been adopted in which it was an accident or equipment failure, and not an assassination. There should have been a simultaneous investigation of a possible crime by something like the FBI. Unfortunately...

I do basically trust that all these agencies are either corrupt from the git-go and throughout their history (FBI) or at the very least corruptible/susceptible to a push from above. I'm sorry if it sounds helpless or paranoid to you, to me it's simple realism and knowledge of history. I think we're in a horrible position where the entire system generates corruption on all levels, in the public sector equally to the private (it's worst of all at the confluence of private/public).

My essay is an exercise in abstraction, given the black hole we have in place of a transparent system of administration and political economy. The timing of the Wellstone accident is simply unbelievable. I realize that someone wins a lottery every day, but tough: Given who is in power and what is happening in October 2002, I do expect such events in advance, and when they happen, to me they are not certainties (or I might start a political group around it) but likelihoods of confirmation.

[TrogL]

107. errr...no, actually - think I'm getting confused between the two threads

>Pilot error is a no-risk conclusion,

The NTSB has a reputation to maintain. If they claim pilot error and it's proven otherwise (I'm thinking something like later crashes show a fault with King Air's) they lose face.

>...and conveniently unfalsifiable

You can't prove a negative, obviously.

You can prove another method of the plane crashing. Hopefully something that doesn't involve:

• violating various laws of physics
  
• magical death rays
  
• alien technology
  
• equipment magically failing and fixing itself
  

or any the other half-baked notions I've heard.

>My essay is an exercise in abstraction...

Sorry, I live in the real world.

Given who is in power and what is happening in October 2002, I do expect such events in advance, and when they happen, to me they are not certainties ... but likelihoods of confirmation.

That's just yet another confirmation that you're deep in logical fallacy. You've got your pet theory and casting around for something, anything that will confirm it.

[JackRiddler]

108. Nope.

I see a coup ongoing. After:

- anthrax to the Senate (October 2001)
- intimidation of Senators by FBI (summer 2002)
- "warning" that Senators may be shot on the golf course (October 2002)

I get an expectation that a Senator will soon be targeted.

Then he is.

I don't imagine that's conclusive, although it confirms my expectation, so I don't scream it from the rooftops - I make a case on an Internet board for why the hypothesis of assassination shouldn't be excluded.

Perhaps you don't see a coup ongoing in 2000-2002. Good for you.

I think you may have a pet theory that assassinations don't happen in the US except in cases when the perpetrators are brought to justice.

[TrogL]

114. Oh, there definitely was a coup

But it was driven by the rabid religious right (RRR) and done by election fraud. That's my pet theory - has nothing to do with assassinations.

There have been plenty of assassinations in the US, I just don't think the evidence supports this particular one. And I still haven't seen you produce any actual evidence of something causing the plane to crash other than people wanting it to.

[spooked911]

78. American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone

American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone by Four
Arrows and Jim Fetzer

This is a good book on the subject.

[TrogL]

106. Oh, you've GOT to be fscking kidding

Here's a thread promoting the book: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2188738

Death Rays?!?!?

[spooked911]

109. Sorry, have you read the book?

I have, and there is nothing in there about "death rays".

They do speculate that an EMP weapon was used.

[TrogL]

115. that was thoroughly discounted on the other thread

I'm sorry, a targetted beam of electromagnetic pulses used to kill people is a "death ray" to me.

[mnhtnbb]

110. I also read the book and recommend it.

[jmowreader]

85. Or...it could just POSSIBLY be...

the fact that Wellstone's pilots attempted a final approach in bad weather at 85 knots in a King Air, which really shouldn't be flown slower than 100.

I believe there's even a note on the front cover of the owner's manual: don't fly slower than 100 knots or you're gonna be sorry.

Shit weather plus slow flying equals dead people. You never operate a King Air at less than 100 knots. There's a guy who hangars his King Air next to the place in Lumberton where I work. I think he TAXIS the thing at 100 knots.

[liberal N proud]

89. Great collection of information

Just makes one ask more questions.

[ooglymoogly]

91. * crime family has a long and very busy reach.

I believe in time we will find out what happened to JFK, 9/11 and the rest in an investigation of the huge network of murder theft and treason brought about by a very few evil families. I think most of us here know who they are.

[slipslidingaway]

93. KR & bookmarked, thank you! n/t

[defendandprotect]

94. Yes, I think they killed Wellstone -- and his wife . . . no stinkin' wives to gum up things again -!

As with Carnahan -- the Mrs. got to serve in the Senate.

I stopped reading the article when I got to the bit about "bad weather" ---
There wasn't any bad weather.

I'll try to find an article which explains and actually challenges some of this thinking --- !!!


Back later ---

But -- dear god -- how much political violence in America does it take to wake us up????

[Norrin Radd]

99. kick

[JackRiddler]

111. kick

[MinM]

112. Connecting the Dots

Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes

January 29, 2002 Posted: 9:26 PM EST (0226 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.

The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation.

He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed, the sources said

Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request.

"The vice president expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the effort in the war on terrorism," Daschle told reporters.

But, Daschle said, he has not agreed to limit the investigation.

"I acknowledged that concern, and it is for that reason that the Intelligence Committee is going to begin this effort, trying to limit the scope and the overall review of what happened," said Daschle, D-South Dakota.

"But clearly, I think the American people are entitled to know what happened and why," he said.

Cheney met last week in the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees and, according to a spokesman for Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham, D-Florida, "agreed to cooperate with their effort."

The heads of both intelligence committees have been meeting to map out a way to hold a bipartisan House-Senate investigation and hearings.

They were discussing how the inquiry would proceed, including what would be made public, what would remain classified, and how broad the probe would be.

Graham's spokesman said the committees will review intelligence matters only.

"How ill prepared were we and why? We are looking towards the possibility of addressing systemic problems through legislation," said spokesman Paul Anderson.

Some Democrats, such as Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, have been calling for a broad inquiry looking at various federal government agencies beyond the intelligence community.

"We do not meet our responsibilities to the American people if we do not take an honest look at the federal government and all of its agencies and let the country know what went wrong," Torricelli said.

"The best assurance that there's not another terrorist attack on the United States is not simply to hire more federal agents or spend more money. It's to take an honest look at what went wrong. Who or what failed? There's an explanation owed to the American people," he said.

Although the president and vice president told Daschle they were worried a wide-reaching inquiry could distract from the government's war on terrorism, privately Democrats questioned why the White House feared a broader investigation to determine possible culpability.

"We will take a look at the allocation of resources. Ten thousand federal agents -- where were they? How many assets were used, and what signals were missed?" a Democratic senator told CNN.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/29/inv.terror.probe/index.html

Thus stalling long enough to avoid any timely oversight..

Paul Wellstone
http://www.alternet.org/story/14399

Max Cleland
http://truthout.org/docs_02/020203G.voting.mach.htm
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_hacked/print

[MinM]

113. Syriana and Wellstone

"Syriana"
http://syrianamovie.warnerbros.com/

by writer/director Steven Gaghan
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-gaghan/on-syriana-and-corruption_b_11870.html

based on the book "See No Evil" by CIA agent Bob Baer .. During an interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Gaghan discussed the research he did with Robert Baer and some of the 'techniques' used by the CIA.

Steven Gaghan said that the one thing really stuck with him .. DO NOT FLY ON SMALL PLANES .. it's to easy to bring them down and pass it off as an accident.