Gun Lost On Fatal Brown Flight

Secret Commerce Report Says Bodyguard’s Firearm Never Recovered From Crash Scene

WASHINGTON -- A handgun carried by a bodyguard assigned to protect the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown "was lost and not recovered" from the wreckage of his plane, which crashed in Croatia in 1996, reveals a still-secret Commerce Department report, a copy of which was obtained by WorldNetDaily.

The internal security report was completed in March 1999 -- 15 months after an Air Force forensic pathologist disclosed that an unusual wound at the top of Brown's head could have been a bullet hole.

Jesse Jackson and other black leaders at the time called for an autopsy to find out if the hole was caused by a bullet.

"I think people have a right to know what really happened," he said in January 1998.

Jackson was joined by NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters in demanding a new investigation into Brown's death.

The Air Force ruled that Brown died of multiple blunt-force injuries sustained in the crash of the Air Force jet in which he was a passenger.

On April 3, 1996, he and his bodyguard, Duane Christian, went down with 33 others traveling on a Commerce trade trip. All 35 aboard died.

But military investigators did not order an autopsy of Brown's body, and failed to recover Christian's weapon when they investigated the crash scene.

"One gun was lost and not recovered in the tragic April 1996 airplane crash in Croatia that killed 12 Commerce employees, including the secretary," found Commerce Inspector General Johnnie E. Frazier in a review of weapon and ammunition inventory.

His findings were part of a department-wide inspection of security procedures. On March 31, 1999, he delivered his 33-page report -- which still hasn't been cleared for public release -- to David Holmes, deputy assistant secretary for security.

The report also says that there has been no internal accounting for the missing gun.

"Because the investigation of the crash was under the jurisdiction of the military, no OSY (Office of Security) report was needed," Frazier added on page 26 of the report.

The gun that turned up missing was a .357 Magnum, which fires a .38-caliber round (which actually measures .36 inch in diameter).

"Brown had a .45-inch inwardly beveling circular hole in the top of his head, which is essentially the description of a .45-caliber gunshot wound," Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in December 1997. At the time, he was a deputy medical examiner with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington.

But another military doctor, who reviewed external examination photos, found the circular wound in Brown's head to be smaller, the Tribune-Review said.

According to Dr. Martin Fackler, former director of the Army's Wound Ballistics Laboratory in San Francisco, the hole was more consistent with a .40-caliber, or 10-millimeter, bullet -- such as the kind used by law-enforcement agencies.

Also, a ballistics expert familiar with the ammunition issued by Commerce told WorldNetDaily that the .357 bullets can flatten on impact and leave a larger hole.

"Given the right conditions," he said, "a soft-point, or hollow-point, slug could leave a .45-size hole."

In an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily, the former primary agent on Brown's protective detail says there's nothing suspicious about the lost weapon.

He speculates that the impact from the crash may have simply ripped it away from Christian's waist holster, which has a strap that snaps shut over the hammer, and thrown it far enough from the wreckage that investigators overlooked it.

"I figure either that happened or Croatian special forces guys are walking around with the weapon" after picking it up as a souvenir, said James E. Ochs, Brown's top bodyguard, who was busy deploying the secretary's motorcade at the Dubrovnik airport when the plane crashed.

Ochs says Croatian police beat U.S. forces to the mountainous crash site and may have scavenged for such items of value.

As for Brown's gunshot-like head wound, Ochs says it was more likely caused by a rivet, bolt or rod that broke free from the plane on impact and penetrated the top of his skull.

"If the plane plowed into a mountain, there would be a lot of debris flying around," he told WorldNetDaily.

Dr. Cogswell, however, says he looked for such objects at the crash site and couldn't find any that would fit the wound.

"My theory is that Brown was still alive. And local Croats who came to loot didn't want anyone to see what they were doing. So they found the gun and shot him," said Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine, who was asked to comment on the findings in the secret Commerce report. Washington-based AIM has followed the tragic story closely from the start and has argued for an autopsy.

"They didn't want it to be obvious, so they got down and fired the gun point-blank into the top of his head," he said. "What happened to the bullet? It went down into the body cavity. Investigators wouldn't have found it unless they did an autopsy."

The ballistics expert, however, says that even such a dense area of bone and tissue wouldn't have stopped a bullet fired by a .357 Magnum, which packs a heavy hit.

"It would have gone all the way through," he said. "There would have been a major exit wound."

No such wound was found on Brown's body -- although the forensic photographer who snapped shots of Brown's corpse when it arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, says examiners failed to thoroughly inspect the buttocks and groin area where a bullet probably would have exited. Nor was she asked to take photos of that area.

"They never looked for an exit wound," said Kathleen Janoski, who was the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology's senior lab photographer then. "And I was there for the entire external examination."

A pathologist hired by the Brown family concluded there was no exit wound, she says, but he made his conclusion based on photos.

Other suspicious circumstances surround Brown's death, leading some to suspect foul play on the part of the Clinton administration.

At the time Brown died, a special prosecutor was investigating his financial dealings, including his presidential fund-raising practices. And Brown was reportedly making noises he would rat out the president -- in the middle of an election year -- if squeezed too hard.

Adding to suspicions, Brown's papers -- like the late deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster's -- were spirited away from his office shortly after he died. Some were destroyed, some were locked up in off-site storage and some were taken to other agencies by Clinton appointees.

Internal documents and testimony from Commerce officials gleaned since his death show that Brown coordinated with the Democratic National Committee and the White House to sell seats on overseas trade junkets for campaign cash.

Convicted Clinton-Gore fund-raiser and suspected Beijing agent John Huang was one of the aides who helped Brown arrange the more controversial missions to the Far East, including China. Huang's immediate boss at Commerce, Charles Meissner, also died in the Croatian plane crash.

Perhaps most chilling, though, is the way the White House rushed the examinations of the victims at the morgue, Janoski says.

"There was a lot of pressure from the White House to get the bodies out of Dover and buried," she told WorldNetDaily.

"In fact, our team leader in this -- Dr. Edward Kilbane -- was ordered to the West Wing for a meeting the Friday before the bodies came back" from Croatia on Saturday, April 6, 1996, Janoski added.

The inspector general's report also mentions another gun missing, this one from Commerce headquarters.

"The other handgun was reported stolen or missing in HCHB (Herbert Clark Hoover Building)," the report says, "so an internal report was prepared."

It turns out that the other gun, also a .357 Magnum, also belonged to Christian, who died at 42. One day in 1995, he reported it missing from his office.

When he was tapped to accompany Brown on his mission to the Balkans, Christian had to borrow a gun from another security specialist. It was the loaner that was lost on the fateful flight, Ochs explains.

Ochs, a former firearms training officer for the department, says he still doesn't know the whereabouts of Christian's own gun, which mysteriously vanished from his office.

The serial numbers of both guns were reported to the National Crime Information Center.

"That's a big deal to lose a weapon," a high-level federal security official told WorldNetDaily.

But he explains that Brown traveled so much that it became impractical for agents to lock their guns up in the department safe when they weren't on the road guarding him. And that made it harder to keep track of them.

"With Brown, the weapons were issued to each agent," he said. "And each agent was charged with the care and well-being of that weapon, because we were always on the road."

After Brown died, Ochs says he "kept them all in a gun safe," and the department didn't have any more problems.

Dr. Cogswell, the whistleblower who left AFIP after being demoted and now works as a coroner in Shreveport, La., also cited as evidence of a possible gunshot wound initial X-rays that showed what appear to be small metal fragments in Brown's head -- similar to the "lead snowstorm" left by a slug as it breaks up in the body.

Janoski, a 23-year Navy veteran, claims that the first set of X-rays were "destroyed" because they showed evidence of a possible bullet entry.

And a second set of X-rays were taken and "deliberately" made less dense to try to diminish the lead snowstorm, she says.

How does she know? She says a Navy criminal investigator, Jeanmarie Sentelle, told her so.

She also says Sentelle told her a gift from Brown's alleged mistress, Yolanda Hill, was ordered destroyed.

The gift -- an Indian good-luck charm consisting of a cigarette butt, a feather, turquoise stones and red beads rolled up in a shammy and tied with twine -- was found in Brown's diplomatic pouch.

Janoski, a registered Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton and then worked as a White House volunteer, also noted that examiners did not test for gunshot residue around Brown's head wound.

"A burnt 9-millimeter clip was thrown in with one of the bodies" by one of the crash scene workers, Janoski said.

She says that although the gun clip was charred from the plane fire, she could see that it was empty -- except for perhaps one round.

Christian's .357 Magnum was a revolver. So the presence of a clip suggests there was another gun -- a semiautomatic -- on board the plane.

Theories about what created Brown's perfectly round wound are predicated on an airborne object hitting his skull, such as a bullet or rivet, rather than his skull hitting a stationary object.

But close-ups of the hole in his skull show less a tunnel than a shallow but clean-cut indentation, or punch-out, as if Brown were thrown head-first into some kind of protrusion, such as a metal stud, connected to a hard, round surface.

In fact, the top of Brown's skull was depressed and fractured, and his scalp was torn away around the hole -- injuries not caused by just a gunshot.

Janoski allows that she probably never would have spotted the hole if the skull weren't exposed by the large laceration.

"City coroners do autopsies on homeless people," Janoski said. "Yet here we have a dead Cabinet member with a hole in his head, and there's no autopsy."

"What they needed to do was open up the skull with a saw and take the brain out and slice it up like a loaf of bread to find out how far this wound went," she added. "Without an autopsy, we're never really going to know what happened."

"It may only prove that he was not murdered," he said. "But that would relieve people of reasonable doubt."

Janoski, who was demoted by AFIP after she publicly complained about the cursory examination of Brown's corpse, says she told her story to Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., in a January 1998 meeting.

She said Conyers, one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus, taped the conversation in a recording room on The Hill and said "he wanted to look into it." But she says he never followed up.

Reno Clears Up Brown Death
"Janet Reno's Justice Department has looked into Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's death and -- surprise, surprise -- found no evidence of a crime. Aren't you relieved? Isn't it nice that they cleared all that up? I sure feel better about this story now, don't you. I'll sleep better tonight.

I heard an ABC News radio report that explained the Justice Department's findings would "put to rest" concerns about a possible gunshot wound in Brown's head. Pretty funny. If I had been relying on ABC News for my information, I wouldn't even know there had been any such concerns.

The Justice Department says it reviewed with Defense Department officials the information obtained by military pathologists after Brown and 34 others died in the 1996 crash of a U.S. military plane. Officials found no evidence of a crime "at this time," hedged head mouthpiece Bert Brandenburg. To the best of his knowledge, no crime took place. To the best of Reno's recollection, it was just a simple plane crash."

"4:00 - In the Republic of South Africa, new reports say that an attempt has been made on the life of Ron Brown’s law partner, Tommy Boggs, by unknown assailants in a staged car accident in Capetown. Later, Boggs will refuse to discuss it."

Fossella got donations, urged Clinton to visit Pakistan
"In Mrs. Clinton's case, the Todt Hill fund-raiser was not the only apparent outgrowth of the lobbying effort. Right after Clinton announced in December that he would not touch base in Pakistan, lobbyist Lanny Davis, who also the organized the Todt Hill event, staged a fund-raiser here that generated $24,000 for the first lady's Senate bid in New York. Davis is a former White House special counsel.

The earlier event was held in the offices of the influential Democratic law firm Patton and Boggs, whose senior partner is Tommy Boggs, lobbyist for the Trial Lawyers Association, a major bankroller of Democratic candidates."

Clinton apologist now lobbies for Islamabad
"In recent months, Lanny Davis has become a very effective spin master for Pakistan. And his urging -- not so much the goat curry event Hillary Clinton attended in New York and received a perfectly legal $ 50,000 contribution to her Senate race -- played a major role in Clinton's decision to stop in Pakistan before returning to Washington.

The New York fund-raiser was organized by the Pakistan Political Action Committee (Pak-Pac).

According to the daily Washington Times, Davis who works for the DC law firm of Patton and Boggs, represents Pak-Pac, the political arm of the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America on a $ 22,500-a-month contract."

Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. was born in Long Beach, Mississippi on February 15, 1914. He attended the public and parochial schools of Jefferson Parrish Louisiana. Hale graduated from Tulane University in 1935 and from the Law department of the same university in 1937. Within the same year he was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in New Orleans. He was elected as a Democrat to the 77th Congress on January 3, 1941, but was an unsuccessful candidate for re-nomination in 1942. Out of work, Hale decided to resume the practice of law in New Orleans. He then enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve. In November 1943 he was commissioned ensign and attached to the Potomac River Naval Command and the United States Maritime service until he was elected as a Democrat to the 18th and the thirteen succeeding Congresses. Boggs would later be described as a "fiercely determined man, an ear-shattering orator, a masterful politician, [and] a sternly partisan Democrat." In January 1971, he rose to the position of House Majority Leader. However, in October 1972, while on a political trip to Alaska, he lost his life in a plane crash. Neither the plane nor his body has ever been found. He was survived by his wife, Lindy, and three children, Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., Barbara Sigmund, and Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Roberts (better known as Cokie Roberts, the nationally known television journalist).

In honor of this great politician many buildings and other public sites across the Southeast have been dedicated and named after him.

Majority Whip
Youngest Man in Congress (age 26 in 1946)
Member of the House Ways and Means Committee
Solved the Highway Funding Puzzle
[End of Transcript>

This little tidbit from Bob Harris, a lecturer who talks about JFK assassination, government abuse, big business, and has helped put together a CD entitled "Encyclopedia of the JFK Assassination". This little information came in form of a question off the CD(I also heard it at his lecture). Hale Boggs, congressman(D-La) was a member of the highly acclaimed Warren Commission. He did not agree with the committee's findings, and thought that a more thorough investigation should have been done. But to the point. In 1972 Hale Boggs boarded a plane destined for Alaska. The plane disappeared, and no remains have ever been found. The authorities determined that the plane crashed. The question that was posed on the CD and the lecture was "Who drove Hale Boggs to the airport that day in his limousine?" Answer: William Jefferson Clinton.

Note: Leading cause of death in Arkansas. Knowing Bill Clinton.
[End of Transcript]

Cokie Roberts Bans The Internet
"As for Cokie Roberts, she is the daughter of Hale Boggs, a former Democratic House Whip who was the product of a corrupt Louisiana political machine that dates back to Huey Long. Interestingly, Boggs was made a member of the Warren Commission that investigated the death of JFK. According to John H. Davis, author of The Kennedy Contract, a book that explores a possible Mafia connection in the assassination, Boggs "could be relied upon to...see to it that his principle financial backer, and behind-the-scenes power in the state government, Carlos Marcello, would not be mentioned in the commissions deliberations, which, as it turned out, he never was."

Marcello was the Gulf-Coast Mafia boss who some observers believe was involved in the JFK assassination, although this was never proven. I will not go into the Boggs family's present connections with the corrupt Clinton administration, which were described in some detail in the Washington Weekly article.

The point of all this is that covering up government corruption must seem like pretty old hat to Cokie Roberts -- nothing really out of the ordinary. The more things change, the more they stay the same -- until that distant day when public awareness of what has been done to our country in the interest of going along in order to get along finally reaches critical mass and the citizens reclaim their government -- and their history.

Published in the May 12, 1997 issue of The Washington Weekly
Copyright 1997 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)
Reposting permitted with this message intact
[End of Partial Transcript]

"We in the press have an enormous obligation to help the voters understand the...morality and the character of the people who want to be President."
Steve Roberts - Reporting concerning George W. Bush.

By 9am that morning, the federal courthouse was full. The case of The United States v Carlos Marcello had attracted spectators and members from both of the families that made up the universe of Marcello. Judge Herbert W. Christenberry presided over a case that charged Carlos and his brother Joe with "conspiracy to defraud the United States government by obtaining a false Guatemalan birth certificate" and "conspiracy to obstruct the United States government in the exercise of its right to deport Carlos Marcello." The case had opened twenty-one days earlier and by November 22, defense attorney Jack Wasserman and U.S. Attorney Louis La Cour were delivering closing arguments.

At 1.30pm, just as the judge was handing the case over to the jury, he was passed a note by the court bailiff. With a shocked expression on his face, he announced that President Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas and was dead. As the courtroom erupted, Carlos walked slowly out of the room, his face an impassive mask. At 3.15pm, the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty" on both charges, against both defendants. Carlos and Joe hugged each other, shook hands with their lawyer and walked out of the courtroom. Just thirty-eight minutes before, Air Force One had taken off from Dallas Love Airport to carry the dead and terribly mutilated body of President Kennedy back to Washington, D.C.

The courts, however, were not yet finished with Carlos. On October 16, 1964, he was indicted in connection with jury tampering at his trial for the forged birth certificate. He eventually came to trial on this charge on August 17, 1965, but once again the jury found in his favour. It was his third consecutive victory against the Justice Department. There now would seem little chance that he would ever be deported.

Free of the impending charges that had hung over him like some Damocles sword, Carlos devoted all his energies into consolidating and building up his Mafia family, and the innumerable business interests that its power had allowed him to develop over the past eighteen years. Dun and Bradstreet, for example, estimated that 50% of New Orleans hotels were financially backed by the Marcello organization.

His political connections linked him into the powerful Long family. Carlos owed a lot to these people. It was after all, Huey Long who had introduced him to Frank Costello and the booming slot machine business that had helped spearhead his rise to power. Carlos maintained close ties with Earl, Huey’s brother, and also son Russell, who became one of Carlos’ principal contacts in the U.S. Senate. Louisiana politician, Congressman Hale Boggs, House Majority Leader, who became a member of the Warren Commission investigating the killing of Kennedy, was also financed into Capital Hill via Marcello. Jim Garrison, the flamboyant New Orleans District Attorney, famous for his involvement in the Kennedy investigation, was on exceptionally good terms with Marcello. Although he had a reputation as a tough prosecutor, he would go out of his way not to bring charges against any of the Marcello organization. During the mid to late 1960’s, he dismissed eighty-four cases brought against Carlos’ men, including one for attempted murder, three for kidnapping and one for manslaughter.

Carlos Marcello was a man with many friends in high places: state and federal judges, governors, senators, labour leaders, the list went on. 98% of the Louisiana legislature would accept bribes, according to Peter Hand, a close friend of Governor Earl Long. Carlos also controlled the head of the Louisiana State Police, Roland Coppola. He had a lock on the State Department of Revenue, the agency that collected all state taxes. They once assessed his $159,000 home in Marrero at only $8,000 for revenue purposes. He also had friends in other places.

Although he always denied any association with the Mafia, he was close to many top bosses. His compadre or closest friend was Santo Trafficante Jr., who ran Tampa and West Florida with an iron fist. Carlos was also on close terms with Joseph "Joey Doves Aiuppa, boss of Chicago, and Kansas City mob leader, Joe Civella. He did business with Dominick Brooklier, who headed up the Mafia in Los Angeles. Carlos was tight with Angelo Bruno, powerful head of the Philadelphia family, and of course for many years he was a good friend and business partner of Frank Costello, who had run what is now known as the Genovese family until 1957.

Carlos also had strong ties to the Dixie-Mafia, an inchoate bunch of loosely connected criminals, some of who traced their history back into the days of Prohibition. That network which did not have an organized hierarchy like the American Mafia specialised in armed robbery, scams, burglaries, safe-cracking, murder-for-hire and drug trafficking. Dangerous in the first degree, these hoodlums would kill anyone who got in their way. As someone described them: "…what makes them dangerous is they don’t think, they just act." Carlos was long connected to one of this group, LeRoy Hobbs, Sheriff of Harrison County in Mississippi, a man so crooked and corrupt, it was said of him, "he is easily influenced by anyone with money, and a good-looking woman."

When it came to women, Carlos was somewhat of an enigma. Although he seemed a faithful husband and father, and in fact remained married to Jacqueline until the day he died, like many of his peers, he would stray from time to time. A report from the New Orleans Crime Commission indicated that Lillian Ropplo, the wife of one of his closest friends who was also a capo in his family, might well have been Marcello’s mistress. He was undoubtedly well known to Virginia Hill, the leggy, voluptuous glamour girl of the mob. Longy Zwillman, the Jewish hood who ran much of New Jersey criminal action, once described Virginia thus, "She didn’t look as if she would be hard to know." In her address book, among a host of well known mobsters, investigators found the name of Carlos Marcello and a contact telephone number. Apart from her obvious assets, it is thought that she also worked as a courier for the mob, helping to move money around the country. So it is conceivable that her relationship with Carlos was purely a business one.

The Marcello control of people at all levels was significant to his control of the Louisiana [Mafia]. He ruled this as a despot, with an independence and insularity that was unique across the twenty-four or so other criminal groups that made up the national syndicate of American-Italian mob families. Joseph Valachi, a former soldier in the Genovese family of New York, was the first "made" ’member of any Mafia family to turn informant and publicly testify as to the inner working of the Mafia in America. When he was asked at the McClellan Hearing what he knew about Marcello, he replied, "Louisiana? I don’t know a thing except they don’t want visitors. Once I was going to see the Mardi Gras and I checked it out with Vito, which I was supposed to do if I took a trip. He said, 'Don’t go.' No explanation, just 'Don’t go.' They didn’t want anybody there. And I was told if I ever had to go to Louisiana, Genovese would have to call ahead and get permission. Genovese himself had to get permission. It was an absolute rule."

Although he was in a federal prison, serving time on drug trafficking charges, Vito Genovese was at this time, arguably, the most powerful mob boss in America. Yet even he would tip his forelock in deference to "The Little Man’ in New Orleans."

By 1966, Carlos Marcello had been the chief executive of his criminal dynasty for almost twenty years. Through bribery, corruption, intimidation and an inherent ability to control situations, he was probably the wealthiest and most influential Mafia leader in the United States. He had succeeded in getting his way, and getting away with everything, all his life. His political acumen was only matched by his public relations savvyness. He once gave a cheque for $10,000 to a prominent society woman who was raising money for the Girl Scouts of America. He told her: "Don’t mention my name. I don’t want any publicity about this." The gift was news all over New Orleans in two days.

He had manipulated the unholy trinity of politics, crime and business like no gangster ever had.

In the fall, he went to New York for lunch, and then on his way home, he socked the wrong man in the face....
[End of Partial Transcript]

Your Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, having completed its assignment in accordance with Executive Order No. 11130 of November 29, 1963, herewith submits its final report.

Earl Warren, Chairman
Richard B. Russel
John Sherman Cooper
Hale Boggs
Gerald R. Ford
Allen W. Dulles
John J. McCloy [ See paragraph #10 and #26 ]

The Lobbyist, 60 Minutes
"Mr. GIACOMO: When Tommy walks in, Republicans, Democrats, everybody looks up. I mean, he is--he's number one without a doubt. He knows everybody and everything.

Hale Boggs and Thomas Hale Boggs Jr.; footage of Lindy, Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. and others; Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. in office; MCI sign on building; Mobil sign; Haiti; flag of Turkey; Mitsubishi sign; Bank of New York building; bank building; German flag; pills being poured on counting tray; M&M's on conveyor belts; man chewing tobacco; residents of United Arab Emirates; list of Boggs' clients; President Clinton; George Bush)

SAFER: (Voiceover) He's been at it for 30 years, born with connections: his father, Hale Boggs, was an influential congressman from Louisiana; his mother Lindy the current ambassador to the Vatican; his sister, Cokie Roberts, part of the Washington journalistic establishment. He and his company have represented MCI, Mobil, Haiti, Turkey, Mitsubishi, big banks, little banks, German banks, Bristol-Myers, M&M's, chewing tobacco, the Arab Emirates, you name it. His list in the lobbying bible is twice as long as the next longest. But what about the promise of his good buddy who, back in '92, spelled out the difference between himself and George Bush?"
[End of partial Transcript]

Cokie Roberts, who co-anchors the ABC News program "This Week" with Sam Donaldson, covers politics, Congress and public policy issues for the network. In addition, Roberts is a senior news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR), where she was the congressional correspondent for more than 10 years.

Roberts first served as a panelist on "This Week with David Brinkley" in 1987, and was named a regular panelist to the program in 1988. She was named co-anchor, with Donaldson, of "This Week" in November 1996.

Along with her husband Steven V. Roberts, a George Washington University professor, Roberts writes a weekly column syndicated by United Media that appears in newspapers around the country. Her op-ed columns have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. She also has written for The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic.

While working for NPR, Roberts won numerous awards, including the highest honor in public radio, the Edward R. Murrow Award. She also was the first broadcast journalist to win the prestigious Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for coverage of Congress. In 1991, she was awarded an Emmy for her contribution to the ABC News special, "Who is Ross Perot?"

Before joining ABC News in 1988, Roberts was a contributor to PBS-TV's "MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour" (now The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer"). Her coverage of the Iran/Contra affair for that program won her the Weintal Award in 1987.

She also has worked as a reporter for CBS News in Athens, Greece; served as a co-host for "The Lawmakers," a weekly public television program on Congress; and produced and served as a host for a public affairs program on WRC-TV in Washington. She is former president of the Radio and Television Correspondent's Association.

In 1998, she published the book We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, which is part memoir and part social history and was on The New York Times Bestseller List for several weeks. Roberts is the daughter of two members of Congress: Hale Boggs, the Louisiana congressman who died in a plane crash in Alaska, and Lindy Boggs, who is now ambassador to the Vatican.

A 1964 graduate in political science from Wellesley College, Roberts received a 1985 Distinguished Alumnae Achievement Award in recognition of "excellence and distinction in professional pursuits." She is the recipient of 12 honorary degrees. She and her husband are the parents of two grown children.
[End of Transcript]

Lindy Boggs was appointed by President Clinton in 1997 as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See (Vatican). She was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana and in 1976, the first woman to chair a national political convention, presiding over the nomination of President Jimmy Carter.

At 24, Boggs came to Washington, DC from Louisiana with her newly elected husband, Congressman Hale Boggs. She emerged as an influential force in American politics -- running her husband's congressional campaigns, managing his Capitol Hill office and chairing numerous organizations such as John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon Johnson's inaugural ball committees.

At the same time she raised three children who would come into prominence in their own right; in the words of her youngest child, NPR and ABC-TV's Cokie Roberts, "Politics is our family business."

In 1972, Congressman Boggs disappeared in a small plane over Alaska. His successor was his wife, who served in Congress for nine terms, from 1973 to 1990. Boggs served on the Appropriations Committee, was instrumental in creating the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families and chaired the Crisis Intervention Task Force. She spearheaded legislation on issues ranging from civil rights to credit access and government service pay equity for women.

Boggs has since served as board member or director of the National Archives, the U.S. Botanical Gardens and the U.S. Capitol Commission. In 1994, she published her autobiography, Washington Through a Purple Veil: Memoirs of a Southern Woman.
[End of Transcript]

Mr. COHEN: Well, that's a good question. Maybe you should ask her. But her father, Cokie Roberts--Arb Roberts of ABC--her father--her late father was Hale Boggs, was a member of Congress. He was a member of the Ways and Means Committee, died in an airplane crash in Alaska in 1972 when he was the majority leader. Cokie, from--from the public record, we know that she was raised as a kid in Washington. Her father was a member of Congress. And even as a kid, she was very well connected to the world of--the House of Representative and she was friendly with members, including with Dan Rostenkowski. So he--and obviously she's become something of a media celebrity and she enjoys, I gather, emceeing various events on Capitol Hill.

LAMB: Why would you need a bicentennial celebration commemorating the Ways and Means Committee?

Mr. COHEN: You don't need it. He wanted to do it to make the committee look--and the members of the committee feel a sense of history, feel important. And, frankly, to--it was a way of--for Rostenkowski to show his importance to others and was a way--and--and--and I say this more positively, he felt good about the committee. And he wanted to bring many of its--its current members and its--and former members together. Among the former members of the committee who attended that dinner in July of 1989 was the then president of the United States, George Bush, who as a friend--good friend of Rostenkowski's."
[End of Partial Transcript]

Burton in the Snake Pit
"When Mrs. Bhutto returned to power in 1993, Siegel returned, too, although his firm, International Public Strategies, shared the lobbying duties with other firms. One was the Washington powerhouse Patton, Boggs & Blow. (The Boggs is Tommy Boggs, son of the late Hale Boggs, whose Louisiana congressional seat was taken over at his death by his widow, Tommy's mother, who now has been nominated by the administration to be ambassador to the Vatican. Tommy's sister is Cokie Roberts of ABC, who is married to the journalist Steve Roberts. Everyone in Washington knows one another.) Patton, Boggs signed a contract with Pakistan in November 1994 stating it "will closely coordinate its activities with International Public Strategies Inc., subject to the overall supervision of the ambassador of Pakistan to the United States." The ambassador, Maleeha Lodhi, signed the contract for Pakistan. Lanny Davis, then a partner in the firm, signed for Patton, Boggs. Davis is now White House special counsel, and his only duty is to protect the Clintons against the media, Kenneth Starr, and whomever, this last being a category that includes Dan Burton."

DISAPPEARANCE
"I remember how, almost twenty years ago, Alaska's only congressman, Nick Begich, and House Democratic leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana disappeared in the same area. And I know in the intervening twenty years there has been a long list of others. Usually the plane is never found. The area is too large, the crevasses and the snow too deep, the waters too quick and too cold. Often the search is over quickly, the names of the disappeared forgotten or never known."

Hale Boggs
He sat on the Warren Commission, which concluded that President Kennedy was slain by a lone assassin. Later, in 1971 and '72, Boggs said that the Warren Report was false and that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI not only helped cover up the JFK murder but blackmailed Congress with massive wire-tapping and spying. He named Warren Commission staff member Arlen Specter as a major cover-up artist. Congressman Hale Boggs, the only dissenting member of the Warren Commission who refused to sign the Warren Report until just before it was submitted. Congressman Boggs' plane disappeared on a flight to Alaska in 1972. The press, the military, and the CIA publicly proclaimed the plane could not be located. Investigators later said that was a lie, that the plane had been found. Warren Commission member Congressman Hale Boggs did not believe the single bullet theory and said, "I had strong doubts about it." In a speech in 1971, Boggs accused the FBI of tapping his phone... and publicly denounced the Bureau's "gestapo tactics".

DATE: 10/16/1972
TIME: c 09:00
LOCATION: Off the Alaska coast
AIRLINE: Private
FLIGHT:
ROUTE:
AC TYPE Cessna 310
REG:
MSN/LN
ABOARD: 4
FATAL: 4
GROUND: 0
DETAILS: The plane was on a flight from Anchorage to Juneau when it disappeared as it was approaching the Chugach Mountain range. Louisiana Congressman and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, Alaska Congressman Nick Begich and his aide killed. Cause unknown.

Begich leans on political savvy, experience

"Mark Begich has spent a dozen years in public life as a city employee or as a member of the Anchorage Assembly. He's been a small-business man and property manager for more than 20 years. This spring, he's making his second run at being elected mayor.

In three Assembly terms, Begich became known as an adroit politician. Colleagues say he was a master at pulling votes together, steering legislation and deciphering the city's annual budgeting process.

"Mark knows government inside out and backward," said former Assemblyman Bill Faulkner, who took the Assembly's helm during Begich's first year in office. Even then, Faulkner said, Begich was an effective ally.

..Longtime Alaskans know Begich as the son of former Congressman Nick Begich, a Democrat who vanished with U.S. House Speaker Hale Boggs in a 1972 Southeast Alaska airplane crash. More recent arrivals know him as the 9 1/2-year Assembly member, a buttoned-down politician who has polished his speaking skills."

"I am too old to go to jail,"
Brown loudly proclaimed. "If I
go down, I'll take everyone
else down with me."
Loose Lips Seal His [Brown's] Fate

Oh geeezz .. this one is a long one ..

Once the kiddies are in bed I'll come back for a better read

Thanks for the ping

You know, Carlos Marcello was alleged by the attorney for Santos Trafficanti to be behind the Kennedy assasination. In fact, he says he had dinner with Santos the night of the murder to celebrate.

Joe Bonanno makes a similar accusation in his autobiography.

"any bets on who it'll be or what time they show up?"

Let's make 'em dizzy. Right now they're trying to "shoot down" the Ron Brown thingy on a Dawnal post. This one will probably blow a fuze in a couple of them :-)

This is from the other thread--------

HK USP 0.45 SD
	Calibre: 0.45 ACP Rate of Fire: SS Ammo Cap.: 12
The specially designed sound and flash suppressor on this HK MK23 virtually eliminates muzzle flash and provides more than 35dB of sound reduction.

There is a type of ammunition sometimes referred to as "snake shot"."

No, it must be denser than you can get with those. Powdered lead encapsulated in a thin teflon "half-capsule" will do it without having to make the weapon special for it(so it'll funtion semi-auto) . No cutting down the recoil spring, or ramp/port work.

Let's index this:

clintonscandals:

To find all articles tagged or indexed using clintonscandals, click below:
	click here >>>	clintonscandals	<<< click here
(To view all FR Bump Lists, click here)

And I would point out that at the beginning of this:

Was Ron Brown Assassinated? Take Two....

I lead off with an excerpt from Strategic Weekly Briefings showing their explanation of how it was done...

"is there a difference between snake shot & rat shot?"

Depends on whether you're shootin' rats or snakes. As I recall the .22 shot rounds were about #11 or #12 shot (very small, less than 1/16 in. ea) and the .38 - .44 cal. used #9 shot (about 3/32 in.dia.)

I never had much luck with them, so I used .45 Hardball :-)

That's not the only thing that was 'lost'.

Brown was supposedly carrying a briefcase full of documentation that would expose people in the White House. That briefcase was somehow never found. Let's talk about that. I see that as more important than the loss of his bodyguard's gun and whether it could have been used to kill him.

If I was the hit man, I would have taken the BG's gun away from him, but not used it on Ron Brown. I would use something that could not be identified or traced. Including the projectile itself.

It seems unlikely that someone who wanted to shoot Brown would have used Christian's weapon, rather than bringing their own. A scavenging Croatian, who arrived after a clean-up crew, seems more likely.

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HK USP 0.45 SD