The report on Shelly Kelly's injuries is about 1/3 down.
The Wall Street Underground Nicholas Guarino An interim report on the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. Cillipi Airport, Dubrovnik, Croatia 2:10 PM April 3, 1996 Captain Amir Schic lands a twin engine corporate jet carrying the Croatian Prime Minister and the American Ambassador. It is one of five planes to land routinely on Runway 12 in the hour preceding the scheduled 3:00 P.M. arrival of IFOR-21, the Boeing T43A carrying Ron Brown and his upbeat entourage of American industrial deal-makers. Cillipi Airport, 2:15 PM. Businessmen begin to straggle unto the lobby, a few carrying umbrellas to ward off the very light to moderate rain. They're early because they're anxious to greet the 35 Americans who at this moment are taking off from Tuzla, Bosnia, 130 miles to the northeast. Outside, a perfect breeze blows at 14 mph from east to west. It is perfect because at 120 degrees from the north it is only one degree off from being an exact head wind for the landing pattern of IFOR-21. Contrary to some U.S. news reports, it is not a dark and stormy night. It is the middle of the afternoon. The Radio Shack of Cillipi Airport, about 2:30 PM. Maintenance Chief Nilco Jerkuic, 46, nervously fiddles with the dials on his VOR (VHF Omnidirectional Radio) beacon. The VOR is the only instrument that can guide the IFOR-21 safely to the runway. Jerkuic re-checks his terrain map again and again. In a couple of hours, he will be a rich man, the two American operatives tell him, if he can quietly send IFOR-21 into Sveti Ivan (St. John's Hill), one of the highest mountains in the area at 2400 feet. On the other hand, if he miscalculates...well, the Americans did not look like men who would forgive someone who botches an assignment as serious as this one. All Jerkuic knows is that there is someone on board the plane who is very dangerous to the American President and it is his job to make sure the plane never lands. He glances out at some broken clouds around 400 feet above. They will have no effect. He will have to depend on the main cloud cover at 2000 feet Sveti Ivan rises almost 400 feet into this overcast. Jerkuic calculates he will have to alter the signal by a full ten degrees, to send the plane that far off course into the mountains. Money or no money, he begins to wonder if he's doing the right thing. He's seen so much bloodshed in the years of the Bosnian War, what's a little more? Cillipi Airport, 2:48 P.M.: Captain Schic climbs to the control tower to give IFOR-21 a friendly radio greeting and reassurance that all is well He describes the Cillipi weather: visibility eight kilometers (5 miles), winds still at 14 mph. all flights arriving normally. Flying at about 10,000 feet and 40+ miles away, IFOR-21 Co-captains Ashley L Davis, 35, and Tim Shafer, 33, thank Schic for his words of welcome. Because there is no airport radar, the control tower will not be able to track IFOR-21 as she approaches the airport. These conditions are later described by Newsweek and others as the worst storm in ten years" with "visibility just 100 yards." (Their portrayal of the weather is flatly denied by Aviation Week and Space Technology.) In the clouds over the Adriatic Sea. 2:50 P.M.: IFOR-21 reports in to Cillipi routinely. It is the last time their voice is heard. Split, Croatia, 2:52 P.M.: The main regional radar station looses IFOR-21 from its screen, as the plane descends below the cloud cover. Kolocep Island. 2:54 PM.: IFOR-21 is dead on course as h passes directly ova Cillipi's first beacon, 11.8 miles from the airport. It then locks onto Jerkuic's beam, which is supposed to guide the plane to the runway. But Jerkuic has mis-set the beam at 119 degrees instead of 109 degrees. This will lead it directly into the mountain range (and the deaths of all passengers) . Aboard an AWACS Plane. 2:56 P.M.: The U.S. Air Force plane keeping track of all air traffic in the area loses track of IFOR-21, just as it passes over Dubrovnik, Being the military version of a Boeing 737-200, IFOR-21 is not easily lost. But because it is less than a mile off course at this point, no one on the AWACS plane notes any problem, Srebreno. Croatia 2:57 P. M.: Villagers hear a plane roaring past unusually low and close. Plat, Croatia. 2:58 P.M.: Villagers Ana and Miho Dunlica rush outside and see IFOR-21 plunging "like a ghost out of the clouds." Velji Do. Croatia. 2:58 P.M.: Everyone in this tiny collection of stone huts at the base of Sved Ivan hears a plane go directly overhead in the clouds, then rev its engines mightily for one instant. Aboard the plane, the klaxon of its ground-proximity warning device suddenly blares, jolting pilot Davis. But the two-to-three seconds of warning are far too little. The plane's left wingtip touches ground, spinning it directly into the rocky hillside, making an earth-shaking explosion. There is the cackling hiss of a huge fireball as the plane and its large load of fuel burn. Then a dead silence in the mist. The tail section remains quite intact, but the rest of IFOR-21 is all over the hill, making later identification of many of the passengers impossible. The nose of the fuselage is just a blackish smudge in the ground. All 35 people are dead except for stewardess Shelly Kelly, who is riding in the tail. She sustains only minor cuts and bruises. Cillipi. 3:18 P.M.: U.S. authorities are notified that IFOR-21 is down, location unknown. However, they are to suffer 11 In hours of pre-planned confusion before arriving at the scene. One prominent report verifies that pieces of the wreckage have been spotted floating in the Adriatic. A later report says a CIA trawler has retrieved some pieces. Republic of South Africa, approximately 4:00 P.M.: News reports say an attempt is made on the life of Ron Brown's law partner, Tommy Boggs, by an unknown assailant in a staged car accident in Capetown. Later, Boggs refuses to talk about the attempt. Allegations have been made that Boggs was culpable in many of Brown's activities. Cillipi, later that afternoon: Niko Jerkuic goes home to collect his reward, but the reward is not waiting for him. It comes three days later: a bullet through the chest, administered just shortly before he is scheduled to be grilled by the U.S. Air Force accident investigation team. The hit squad wraps his hand around the gun and departs. The Americans do not want a live witness who could spill the beans later. Like many of the Whitewater dead, Jerkuic is immediately labeled a suicide, even though there's no evidence - and a chest wound is a rare cause - especially with a large caliber pistol (unusual in Europe). The quick official reason given for bachelor Jerkuic's death is despondence over romantic troubles with his girlfriend. I have been unable to find any verification for this. Instead, I have found that neighbors and friends all agree Jerkuic was NOT depressed. He bad survived the years of the Bosnian War. He was excited that life was finally getting better. Crash site. 7:20 P.M.: Four hours and 20 minutes after the crash, the first Croation Special Forces search party arrives on the scene. They fund only stewardess Kelly surviving. They call for a helicopter to evacuate her to the hospital. When it arrives, Kelly is able to get on board without assistance from the medics. But Kelly never completes the short hop. She dies an route. According to multiple reports given to journalist/editor Joe L. Jordan, an autopsy later reveals a neat three-inch incision over her main femoral artery. It also shows the incision came at least three hours after all her other cuts and bruises. This creates in your mind a horrifying scene in the back of the chopper, as one Special Forces operative holds down the struggling woman while another slice her leg. Further autopsies of other passengers probably will not be made. Clinton ordered the cremation of all victims - it's hard to perform autopsies on ashes. Confusion or Cover-up? Ever since the crash, most reporters and officials have refused to even consider the possibility of foul play. Some Some are merely following orders. But most have instinctively fled from the disturbing possibility that Ron Brown was assassinated by people close to his own President. They are confronted with the brutal impossibility of two experienced pilots following a VOR beam into a mountain 1.6 miles off course. So they all shrug their shoulders in bewilderment. None of their theories have come even close to explaining how a beacon that is accurate to within two feet at the landing point could lead the plane so far astray. But they have tried: * The Air Force's official explanation is that the pilots set the compass on the airplane 10 degrees off course. That is absurd Besides having an electric compass, the plane was also equipped with a magnetic compass. Pilots routinely set their compasses right before takeoff. If the compass was set off 10 degrees, they could not have been on course when they passed the first beacon, 11.8 miles from the airport. Instead, they would have been miles and miles off course at this point. To make this explanation even more absurd, the plane was flying on the VOR signal, not the compass. That explains the half truth. Yes the plane was flying 10 degrees off course, but it was because the VOR beam had been tampered with. * One desperate explanation was that a nasty crosswind "blew the plane sideways. Not credible. This wind would require a wind 90 degrees off the actual wind. * Most of the press and of officialdom have blamed poor visibility. To do this. they have taken the ferocity of the rainstorm later that afternoon and evening - and moved it back in time to the crash hour. But records show the weather from 2:54 pm to 2:58 pm was simply not that bad. It was well above the minimum required for landing. And VHF beacons NEVER get blown off course by the wind. * Pilot fatigue and strain? Not likely on a 45-minute flight. * Equipment malfunction on a rickety old plane? IFOR-21 was the number two plane in the White House fleet - in essence, Air Force 2. It had carried Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Defense Secretary William Perry just the week before. Everything about the flight was checked out and rehearsed a week in advance. * Lighting or other troubles causing the pilots to lose track of the beam? No, they were both drilled in the standard procedure for Cillipi: if you lose the beam or miss the airport, you immediately veer TO THE RIGHT AND UP to make sure you avoid Sved Ivan. Indisputably, the pilots thought they were following the beacon. Otherwise, they would have executed the standard right turn within seconds. Plus, their landing gear was locked down. They expected to land at any moment. In sum, none of the "official" explanations to date hold any water. And all of them ignore the glaring fact that IFOR-2 did not simply stray off path at the last moment. By all accounts, she went straight as an arrow to her doom, the moment she left Kolocep Island beacon and picked up the Cillipi beacon. The problem had to be the Cillipi beacon, which was broadcast to cause the plane to fly 10 degrees too far north. And even worse..... Could the problem have been that technician Niko Jerkuic had let his equipment become run-down? No. Thousands of landings had taken place while his equipment was running. Some, just minutes before IFOR-21. To transmit a VOR beacon that's ten degrees off, has got to be done intentionally. Yes, that VOR system is old and antiquated. But the fact is, millions of flights land successfully all around the U.S. every year, using the same old, antiquated equipment. A magnetic compass is old and antiquated. Columbus sailed to the new world with one. But to this day, every ship and plane in the world uses the same old, antiquated magnetic compass. They use them because they work. Obviously, this explanation could do double duty, by aiding the suicide theory. In this scenario, Jerkuic simply felt so bad about his shoddy work that he shot himself. Unfortunately, for the theory, you can't just accidentally bump a knob and make the whole VOR apparatus line up planes wit Sved Ivan. It takes a sustained effort, from an expert technician. Plus, the same beacon had guided other planes safely onto the runway, just before IFOR-21. So Jeruic had to have made his adjustment at the last minute. Alternative scenario: It is very possible - and a bit simpler - that Jerkuic simply shut his beacon down. At the same moment, a decoy beacon would have been turned on by a fellow operative sitting on Sved Ivan. A decoy beacon easily fits in a jeep. This is an old, old trick. The question arises: could not the whole issue be resolved by a quick review of the tapes at the control tower? They probably could - if the tapes had not suddenly disappeared. And couldn't the air traffic controller shed some light on things? Certainly. But now he, too, has "committed suicide" - which, by the way, is a rare event for such a cause in Croatian culture. I repeat: No official anywhere is facing these facts. As a result, their "explanations" are laced with words like "mysterious" and "unknown" and "inexplicable" and "unfortunate." And Wait... There's More! Air Force investigation killed (for the 1st time in history) The chief investigator for Pratt & Whitney happened to be at the Paris Air Show on April 3. Pratt & Whitney always sends an investigator when a plane powered by their engines has a mishap. So the man called his boss in America. and said in effect, "We just had a crash in Croatia. I think I'd better get down there." The response was "Go pack." But as the investigator was packing at his hotel, his boss called back. "DON'T go," he told the astonished employee. There's not going to be a safety investigation." For the first time in its history, the Air Force had canceled the safety investigation of a crash on friendly soil. There would only be a quick token legal investigation, designed to enable a committee to blame the pilots and some Air Force brass, and go home. At this time, it's an open question whether the black boxes will play a role. Within hours after the crash, the Croatian Ministry of Transport announced they had the black boxes. one and a half days after the crash, Croatian TV (plus Russian and French TV) announced the FDR (flight data recorder) and the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) were safely in the hands of the U.S. Marines. They said that soon, "the cause of the crash will be assessed to find out what happened." The U.S. European command in Stuttgart, Germany, also stated that a black box was aboard. Later, the Pentagon brass stoutly denied all this. they said there were NO black boxes aboard. They claimed the actual recovered boxes were designed to hold soda pop and toilet paper. (In fact, the black boxes are painted bright orange, so investigators can more easily find and identify them. The Croats, who feel they can tell a reel of tape from a roll of toilet paper, are keeping mum.) It is hard to imagine that America's #2 VIP plane had no black box. And a veteran Air Force mechanic, who claims to have worked on just about every T43A in the USAF, tells me he never saw one without a black box. Why would anyone want to murder Ron Brown? By all accounts, Ron Brown was a charming fellow who worked very hard and effectively to promote U.S. business. Why, then, would anyone want to kill him? And who would have the resources to do it by bringing down the #2 airplane in the White House fleet? The answer, in brief, is that Ron Brown was going to prison - no if s, and's or but's about it. Also Bill Clinton's presidency was surely going down with him. And the President could not allow that. To anyone who has followed the story closely, this conclusion is inescapable. Brown was up to his neck in numerous major scandals: Whitewater, the Denver airport mess, Mena, the Keating Five, Lillian Madsen and her Haitian prostitutes, etc. Small wonder that 22 congressmen wrote Clinton in February 1995. demanding he fire Brown. At the time of his murder, Brown was under investigation by: * a special prosecutor in the Justice Department; * the FDIC, * the Congressional Reform and Oversight Committee; * the FBI; * the Energy Department; * the Senate Judiciary Committee; * and even his own Commerce Department Inspector General. But in case you missed the piecemeal accounts m the papers. Here is an extremely condensed summery of 11 of Brown's woes. As I'll show below, many of them were shortly going to become Bill Clinton's woes: 1. How did North Viet Nam recently get the U.S. to drop its trade embargo against them so suddenly? Easy. As a leading Vietnamese businessman and official revealed to the press, the Communist government paid Brown $700,000 to do it. the money went into a Singapore bank account, the embargo fell, and Clinton squashed a feeble FBI attempt to investigate. He and Brown also neutralized a federal grand jury probe later. 2. Brown sold plane seats on other trade trips besides the one to Bosnia/Croatia. Companies making big contributions to the Democratic Party or the Clinton Victory Fund could buy access and tax break or regulatory favors. 3. The 1-23-95 U.S. News & World Report broke the news that Brown had bought a $300,000 townhouse for his girlfriend, Lillian Madsen, a prominent political player and whorehouse madam from Haiti. 4. Brown used to receive $12,500 a month as the P.R. agent for Baby Doc Duvalier, the much-loathed dictator of Haiti. Brown received this money for nearly five years, while he was a member of the Democratic National Committee. Brown also managed Baby Doc's $50 million investment find, most or all of which is now in Viet Nam firms. 5. Brown was a key board member of Chemfix, a Louisiana "waste management" corporation that landed a $210 million contract with New York City in 1990, with Brown's help. That was despite the fact that Chemfix had two other contracts with other municipalities canceled because of its inability to perform. Brown got company stock at 24% of market value, making him millions. New York mayor David Dinkins got to host me Democratic Convention. A typical Ron Brown win/win deal. 6. Brown founded Capital/Pebsco, which - fresh out of the box got a contract with Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry to handle the city's pension funds. Not a bad start for a new company with no investing experience. 7. In a deal that has left CIA people livid, Brown okayed the sale of a new U.S. gas turbine engine to China China will use the engines m its cruise missiles McDonald Douglas developed the turbine as a military engine. But Brown arbitrarily reclassified it as "civilian". That let China build a fleet of missiles, using U.S. engines and technology, which they can poise, of course, at the US. 8. Brown irked Congress and most of Europe by acting as point man for Clinton to bring Iranian influence and weapons into the Bosnian War. That broke the U.S.- endorsed arms embargo. The money for the arms most likely came from Commerce and Agriculture, slush fund money channeled to U.S. manufacturers; from there to U.S. -friendly nations and firms overseas; and from there to Iran. The arms included helicopter gun ships, big artillery, stinger missiles, land mines, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank weapons, grenade launchers, and other quality weapons. Most of the arms will stay on the European scene for decades to come, keeping the area destabilized. As one leading munitions dealer put it: "Iran/Contra was slingshots and cap guns compared to the quantities and size of arms given the Croatian Serbs That is why the Croatian Muslims enthusiastically hosted Brown's planeload of executives. They felt grati- tude for the free arms, as well as a desire to do deals. 9. Brown was the partner of a Democratic fund-raiser named Nolanda Hill. Hill paid Brown $500,000 for his 50% interest in First International, Inc., a company that never made any profits. Most glaringly, Brown never invested a cent m First International. First International owned Corridor Broadcasting, which had defaulted on massive government loans of $40 million, The loans were passed on to the FDIC, which was unsuccessful in collecting anything from Hill. Yet at the same time, First Intentional was making large contributions to the Democratic Party, and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Brown, through shell corporations. These payments to Brown - three checks for $45,000 each - were the core of Representative Clinger's evidence that forced Janet Reno to hire Daniel Pearson as special investigator of Brown's crimes. They were cashier's checks, all cut the same day m 1993, with sequential numbers. Yet supposedly, the money came from three contributors, acting independently. Brown never disclosed or paid any taxes on these amounts. 10. By personally delivering a warning letter signed by Clinton, Brown was able to force a bargain deal with the Saudis for $6 billion in American military aircraft and hardware. To get the planes the Saudis also had to accept a fat $4 billion phone contract with AT&T: otherwise, they would get no aircraft. Also part of the deal: AT&T had a multi-million dollar side agreement with Brown's First International, which was hired as a "consultant" (see above). And the Demo- cratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign fund were beneficiaries. This is how big business is done in Clinton's America. 11. The last nail in Brown's coffin was pounded in four days before his crash. FBI and IRS agents subpoenaed as many as 20 witnesses for a serious probe of Brown in Washington. It seems that an Oklahoma gas company called Dynamic Energy Resources gave Brown's son Michael $500,000 in stock, a $160,000 cash payment, and exclusive country club memberships. Former Dynamic president Stewart Price told a Tulsa grand jury that the money was to be routed to Ron Brown, who was expected to "fix" a big lawsuit for Dynamic. There is little chance you heard about this death-knell, grand jury case. Radio station KTOK in Oklahoma reported it on March 28, 1996; the Washington Times made it a front-page story on March 29. But then a lock was put on the story. The AP and New York Times wire services blocked any future release of the information. Welcome to the new world order. Final proof: the 2-8-96 Washington Post reported Brown had retained top legal gun Reid Weingarten, a former high official in Justice Department, as his criminal attorney. You don't pay his price ($750 an hour) unless you know a criminal indictment is coming, and you're probably going to jail Janet Reno appointed Daniel Pearson as Brown's special prosecutor earlier this year. She gave him blanket permission to investigate anything. That's when Brown angrily demanded that Clinton force her to withdraw Pearson. But Reno couldn't do that. She had been backed into a comer by Rep. William F. Clinger, Jr., chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Clinger had copies of Brown's First International checks, plus other incriminating documents. When Clinton said he couldn't comply, Brown went ballistic. His fatal mistake - according to Brown confidants who requested anonymity - was telling Clinton he wasn't going to take the rap. He wasn't going to let his wife and son take the rap, either. (Both had received hundreds of thousands in under-the-table payments themselves.) He was going to finger Bill and Hillary instead. That would have sunk Bill's reelection campaign on the spot. Dead man walking >From that point on, Brown was dead. Like Vince Foster before him, he knew too much. He knew where all the money went for the payoffs, bribes, scams, money laundering, cover-ups, participation fees, hush money and side deals - all the way from one-man operations to vast multinational trade treaty fixes. The phony suicide fake out used on Foster could not be repeated, of course. But an airplane crash is always viewed as an accident. So agents were sent - not directly by Clinton, but through a White House staffer - to a standing network of high- level killers, sometimes called the "Octopus." If the frequently stormy weather at Cillipi had not cooperated, there would always be another trip - somewhere, somehow - and soon. If the preceding data were widely know, America would realize Bill Clinton is by far the most dangerous man ever to live in the White House. His complex personality certainly has a genial side. But a clear overall picture of this man must include the brutal nature of the hit team that carries out his muttered wishes, and looks after his political fortunes. This is not simply the rag-tag "Arkansas mafia" that followed Clinton to Washington. It is a small but extremely well-organized network of pro-establishment heavy hitters and their ground-level operatives. With a few changes of face, they have been on the scene since the 1970's. They are a diverse band of high-level thugs who are the muscle squad of the establishment. If you are a member of Congress, I urge you to assign your most trusted staff members to investigate these crimes. Start with a conversation with Daniel Pearson. He is still willing to share his information. +--+--+
