Newspapers / Fayetteville State University Student … / March 9, 1998, edition 1 / Page 6
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The Bronco* Voicc March 9, 1998 SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT Murder by flight? What the Government doesn’t want you to know about the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown Part 1 By Shawn Torry On April 3,1996 a military plane carrying then Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown and a delegation of American corpo rate and government leaders crashed in Croatia. Thirty- four people on board died in the crash. Initially widely reported and believed to have been just a terrible accident, in the days and months that followed, news reports hinting of a po tential murder and government cover up began to surface. FUEL FOR CONSPIRACY THEORY From the very beginning, government press releases and statements about the crash contradicted each other. Early reports said that the plane, a U.S. Air Force T-43, a military version of the Boeing 737 pas senger jet, was three hours late for a scheduled landing in Dubrovnik from Tuzla in Northern Bosnia-Hersegovina. The Pentagon initially claimed to have had confirmed reports that the plane had crashed in the Adriatic Sea. Following those reports, rescue efforts became centered on the wa- surface challenging the government’s claim that the weather was largely respon sible for the crash, the Air Force later admitted that “the weather was not a substan tially significant contributing factor in this mishap.” Accord ing to the official Air Force report on the crash — which is more than 17,000 pages bound in twenty-two volumes — three factors caused the crash. The first factor was identi fied as a “paper work” foul- up, which had not alerted Air Force personnel that the Air Force had never certified the Dubrovnick airport and its ap proaches as safe. The second factor was that the approach to runway twelve, the runway on which Brown’s plane was to land, had not been designed properly by the Croatians. The third and most important fac tor was “gross pilot error” which contributed to the crash. It is important to note that the pilot of Brown’s plane was an “Evaluator Pilot,” for that type of air plane. He taught people how to fly the plane, and was the senior pilot on that kind of plane in the squadron. The pilot had logged more than 3,000, flight hours, and the co- “Wow! Look at that hole in Brown’s head. It looks like a bullet hole. ” ter. Later, reports began sur face that the plane had in fact slammed into the side of a mountain. The government’s claim of terrible weather conditions has been widely disputed. What the Pentagon called the “Storm of the Decade” was, accord ing to Aviation Week Maga zine, actually nothing more than a light to moderate rain, with a constant fourteen miles per hour headwind at the time of the crash. Airport landing reports indicate that five air craft managed to land safely just ahead of Brown’s ill-fated flight. None of the planes re ported having any landing problems. One plane that landed safely ahead of Brown’s was a plane carrying U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith and the Premier of Croatia, Ziatko Matesa. The pilot of that plane later said, “I was sure they would land.” As more reports began to pilot had even more time fly ing the plane than the pilot did. Both pilots were experienced, and had unblemished safety records. From the absolute begin ning of the investigation, offi cials in Washington were re porting that the crash was an accident. Just one day after the crash, without the benefit of any in depth official investiga tion to validate his remarks, Secretary of Defense William Wilson, told the Associated Press that the Brawn crash was a “Classic sort of accident that good instrumentation should have been able to pre vent.” The official Air Force report would later reveal that part of the pilot error was due to malfunctioning navigational guides and beacons from the Dubrovnik airport. Air Force investigators were unable to confer with the Dubrovnik airport mainte nance chief, Niko Junic, to de termine whether or not there had in fact been a malfunction of airport navigational systems at the time of the crash, be cause he “committed suicide” three days after the crash. He “shot himself in the chest.” The New York Times reported that the 46 year old Junic was “de spondent over a failed ro mance.” Niko Junic’s family disputed that report, also a. re cent medical examination listed his psychological state as being normal. The Air Force report claimed that the pilot drifted some 10 miles off course. It is very hard to imagine air traf fic controllers allowing a plane to drift that far off course with out some kind of dialogue with the pilot. In fact, air traffic con trollers begin alerting pilots if they begin to veer two miles off of the course heading. Therefore, many important questions about the crash could have easily been answered by simply reviewing the control tower tape of all conversations with Brown’s plane, but the Dubrovnick airport’s control tower tapes mysteriously dis appeared. Not only did the tower tape disappear, but the back up cylinder, which keeps a back up copy off all tower traffic, was missing also. All of these “coincidences” are very strange to say the least. Air Force policy requires that planes that transport gov ernment officials of diplomatic status or higher have a “Black Box”. For some reason Brown’s plane was not equipped with one. This was the same plane that had flown the first lady and daughter to Turkey only weeks earlier. Why this plane, on this flight, did not have a Black Box or some other voice recording de vice is simply not known. The Air Force could give no expla nation. In fact, the entire Air Force investigation itself was “un usual” from the start. It is Air Force policy to treat every military plane crash as suspi cious throughout the investiga tion, which is conducted in a two part process. The first process of the in vestigation, called the Safety Board, determines if the plane crash was a result of an acci dent, hostile fire, sabotage, me chanical failure, or some other cause. The Safety Board sim ply gathers all relevant ipfor- mation of a crash. The Board does not assign guilt; all testi m Ron Brown is shown with President Clinton in 1992 when Brown was appointed the first Black U.S. Secretary of Commerce. mony and evidence is private, and cannot be used in court. The second phase of the in vestigation, the Accident/Le gal investigation, does assign guilt. The purpose of this in vestigation is to find out what happened during and after the crash for legal proceedings. Oddly, the Brown crash in vestigation skipped the Safety Board phase of the investiga tion, and immediately began and ended with the Accident/ Legal Investigation phase. THE DEATH OF SOLE SURVIVOR THE Many reports said that one person, a female, had survived the crash. That survivor was Air Force Sergeant Shelley Kelly, one of the two flight at tendants who were seated in the rear of the plane. The rear of the plane was largely intact after the wreckage. The first rescuers arrived on the scene of the accident approximately four hours after the crash, to find Kelly alive. Reports indicate that she helped herself into the rescue helicopter. After having sur vived alone more than four hours after the wreckage, and helping herself into the rescue helicopter, Sgt Kelly was dead on arrival when the helicopter landed at a near-by hospital. An autopsy at Dover Air Force Base later revealed that she died from a broken neck. THE HOLE IN BROWN’S HEAD RON The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), is an in ter-service unit which investi gates plane crashes. The AFIP dispatches a forensic patholo gist to the scene of a crash to gather information and confer with pathologists at the Dover Air Force Base headquarters to determine the cause and manner of death of each vic tim. Lieutenant Colonel Steve Cogswell, deputy medical ex aminer with the AFIP, was sent to investigate the Brown wreckage. While Dr. Cogswell was in vestigating the crash site, Brown’s body, along with the rest of the victims, arrived at Dover Air Force Base. The bodies arrived in transfer cases. Each case had been labeled. The label on the sec ond case read “CRO-002-01. This number, when translated, meant “Croatia, second body off the truck.” When the case was opened, a green body bag came into view. The bag was tagged “BTB Brown”- which meant “believed to be” Ron Brown. Exact confirmation was later made by FBI finger prints. Each body went through several stations. The first sta tion was the FBI x-ray ma chine, which checks the bod ies for explosives or explosive residue. The second station was the FBI fingerprinting sta tion. The third station was the dental x-ray, and the final sta tion was the full body x-ray. The AFIP had the author ity to, and did, perform autop sies on the bodies of all of the military victims. Dr. Cogswell said that autopsies help tell in vestigators how the plane crashed. The AFIP did not have authority to perform au topsies on the civilian victims, to include Ron Brown. They did, however, perform external examinations on each victim. It was during the external examination of Ron Brown’s body that the hole in his head was discovered. Air Force Colonel, Dr. William Gormley, an See "ACCIDENT?” pg. 8
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