Ron Brown Killed In Jet Crash Business Executives Also Die In Croatia
April 04, 1996
WASHINGTON — A U.S. Air Force passenger jet carrying Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and a group of senior U.S. business executives crashed into a hilltop in Croatia yesterday.
The Pentagon said 33 people were aboard, and all were presumed dead. Authorities in Croatia said 10 bodies were recovered from the wreckage.
Authorities blamed the crash on foul weather and the rugged Balkan terrain surrounding the Adriatic port city of Dubrovnik, where the plane was attempting an instrument landing in a rainstorm.
Deep into last night, Croatian police and U.S. soldiers were searching for survivors, scrambling over rocky cliffs and peering with flashlights through sheets of rain. The partially burned plane could be seen lying on its belly atop a hill.
Brown, the business executives and several Commerce Department aides were participating in a trade mission to Bosnia. Nathaniel Nash, the Frankfurt bureau chief of the New York Times, also was said to have been on board the plane.
Croatian news services reported that one passenger - a woman - survived the crash, but died on the way to a hospital.
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http://articles.philly.com/1996-04-04/news/25659176_1_usair-crash-plane-crash-site
Lum’s windfall, Dem donations under scrutiny
Her company brought in $8 million and she gave thousands to Democrats
November 11, 1996
A "no money down" investment apparently yielded a windfall of $8 million or more in just a few months for an Oklahoma company controlled by Democratic contributor and fund-raiser Nora T. Lum.
Congressional Republicans now want to know whether Lum misused her close ties to the Clinton administration and the Democratic National Committee to make the unusually lucrative deal, said Dave Bossie, staff investigator for Rep. Dan Burton.
Investigators are also looking at links between the Oklahoma deal and the Asian Pacific Advisory Council, a 1992 campaign project of the DNC, headed by Lum and her husband, attorney Eugene K.H. "Gene" Lum.
One of those associated with APAC-Vote was John Huang, who has been under attack by Republicans in recent weeks for his role in allegedly soliciting foreign contributions.
Melinda Yee, then top adviser on Asian-American issues for Clinton's campaign, was the group's liaison with the DNC and reported directly to the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, then DNC chairman.
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http://archives.starbulletin.com/96/11/04/news/story2.html
Couple Agree To Guilty Plea In Illegal Gifts To Democrats
May 22, 1997
WASHINGTON, May 21— An Oklahoma couple who raised thousands of dollars for Democrats in recent years have agreed to plead guilty to arranging $50,000 in illegal contributions in the 1994 election, the Justice Department said today.
Under the agreement, the couple, Eugene K. H. and Nora T. Lum, each agreed to plead guilty to a single count of conspiring to contribute the funds illegally through intermediaries described in legal papers as ''straw donors.'' The intermediaries were generally provided with money to make the donations or were reimbursed afterwards. In some cases, checks were written on a donor's behalf without his or her knowledge.
The donations, including some contributions funneled through employees of the Lums' Oklahoma gas pipeline company, Dynamic Energy Resources Inc., went to the campaigns of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and W. Stuart Price, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress in Oklahoma. Mr. Kennedy later returned some of the contributions.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/22/us/couple-agree-to-guilty-plea-in-illegal-gifts-to-democrats.html
The Botched Ron Brown Investigation
An Interview with AFIP Forensic Photographer Kathleen Janoski
October 26, 1998
Former Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown died on April 3, 1996, in a plane crash near Dubrovnik, Croatia. Thirty- four persons accompanying Brown on the trade mission also died in the crash. Due to the efforts of Judicial Watch we now know beyond a reasonable doubt that seats on Brown's Commerce Department trade missions were sold to raise funds for the Democratic National Committee and the 1996 Clinton/Gore Campaign. There is overwhelming evidence that Bill and Hillary Clinton knew of and approved this improper and illegal fundraising scheme [1].
Even more serious than the sale of public property for campaign contributions is the likelihood that transfers of American technology, approved and overseen by Ron Brown's Commerce Department, breached national security. Bernard Schwartz, head of Loral Corporation and a major donor to the DNC, accompanied Brown on a 1994 trade mission to China. During this trade mission Brown set up a meeting between Schwartz and a Chinese government official. This meeting led to a transfer of American missile technology to the Chinese that is now the subject of a congressional investigation [2].
At the time of his death Ron Brown was under subpoena to produce documents relating to the sale of seats on trade missions to Judicial Watch for its suit against the Commerce Department. Nolanda Hill, a friend and business partner of Brown, testified under oath that Brown had shown her a collection of such documents in an ostrich skin portfolio. These documents were withheld from Judicial Watch in violation of the subpoena and a FOIA request. Just before his death Brown reportedly said of his mounting legal troubles, "I am too old to go to jail. If I go down, I'll take everyone else down with me" [3].
The suspicious circumstances surrounding the crash of Brown's plane have given rise to much speculation of foul play [4]. Making Brown's death even more suspicious is the fact that a perfectly round .45 inch inwardly beveling hole was discovered in the top of his head as his body was being processed by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). The story of the hole in Brown's head broke on November 24, with a report by Christopher Ruddy in the Pittsburgh Tribune- Review. Ruddy reported that Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell, a deputy medical examiner with AFIP, questioned the official finding that Brown died of multiple blunt- force trauma as a result of the airplane crash. Cogswell, who did not personally examine Brown's body, based his suspicions on x-rays and photographs of the top of Brown's head. Also suspicious, according to Cogswell, was the fact that the original x-rays of Brown's head showed possible metal fragments in the brain, consistent with a high-velocity gunshot wound. The two head x-rays are missing from Brown's file and Cogswell suspects they were never placed in the file [5].
On December 5, 1997, AFIP imposed a gag order on Cogswell, forcing him to refer all press inquiries on the Brown case to AFIP's public affairs office. Cogswell was told he could leave his office only with the permission of Dr. Jerry Spencer, Armed Forces Medical Examiner. He was escorted to his house by military police, who seized all of his case materials on the Brown crash. If matters had remained there we could dismiss Cogswell as a rather eccentric fellow willing to jeopardize his military career by making wild accusations. But on December 9, 1997, Lt. Col. David Hause, another AFIP pathologist, came forward to corroborate Cogswell's story.
Hause, one of AFIP's leading experts on gunshot wounds, was present in the room when Brown's body was being examined. A commotion erupted when Chief Petty Officer Kathleen Janoski said "Wow, look at the hole in Ron Brown's head." Hause walked over and verified that the wound penetrated the skull, exposing brain matter. According to Hause, the wound "looked like a punched- out .45-caliber entrance hole." After Hause spoke to Ruddy, the AFIP gag order was broadened to include all AFIP personnel.
Read complete article with interview (original link not available)
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BRR222XGnnsJ:www.buchal.com/library/coverups/ronbrown.htm+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us