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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.
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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.
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(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.
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