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NewsMax.com

Monday, July 8, 2002 12:43 a.m. EDT

Daschlegate Offers White House Tempting Target

Now that top Senate Democrat Tom Daschle has called on President Bush to release the full Securities and Exchange Commission case file into the investigation of Bush's 1990 sale of Harken Energy stock, the White House's search for an effective response has undoubtedly begun.

They won't have to look far.

Turns out, Daschle and his wife Linda have their own sealed case files to worry about: records left over from the 1995 Senate Ethics Committee investigation into the alleged cover-up of the Democrat power couple's role in the deaths of three South Dakota Forest Service physicians who perished in a 1994 air crash.

The death plane was a charter aircraft operated by a close Daschle friend. The top Senate Democrat reportedly leaned on regulators to go soft on safety inspections for the charter company before the fatal crash.

Predictably, the Clinton Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee didn't do much with wrongful death and cover-up charges alleged by the doctors' widows - despite a blockbuster "60 Minutes" expose where the women expressly blamed Daschle for the deaths.

Heightening the Daschlegate intrigue, a Federal Aviation Administration office manager said she was ordered by superiors to destroy documents relevant to the fatal crash to protect Linda Daschle, who was then second in command at the agency.

The Forest Service physicians were killed when a plane operated by B&L Aviation crashed in Minot, N.D., on Feb. 24, 1994. B&L was owned by longtime Daschle crony Murl Bellew, who, before the crash, had asked his senator friend to help when the Forest Service found numerous safety violations with his aircraft.

According to the New York Times, the Senator then began "a two-year effort to strip the U.S. Forest Service of authority to inspect air charter companies." What's more, it appears Daschle tried to cover up his attempt to undermine the Forest Service.

In a Feb. 5, 1995, report, the Times revealed:

"[Daschle] initially said that he never pressed the Forest Service to get its inspectors to relax their inspections on B&L. But in November, a senior Daschle aide said that he had, with the senator's knowledge, intervened directly with the Forest Service inspectors who had warned that B&L was unsafe."

More evidence that the senator's denial was untrue emerged when documents turned up showing that Daschle had personally leaned on the Washington supervisors of the inspectors who had given Mr. Bellew's airline an unsafe rating.

The Times explained:

"Two FAA inspectors who spoke on condition of anonymity said in recent interviews that the Senator helped Mr. Bellew when he flunked a safety check in 1987." After Daschle intervened, one agency official was "called on the carpet to explain what happened," one of FAA sources said.

Then there's the account of Cathy Jones, an FAA office manager in Rapid City, S.D.

Jones told investigators that she was ordered to destroy documents relevant to the case because they "contained information with the possible appearance of improper intervention by Senator Daschle on behalf of the FAA."

The documents in question, Jones said, "would make the FAA look bad" because of Mrs. Daschle's top job with the agency.

On Nov. 30, 1995, the Senate Ethics Committee dismissed the doctors' widows' complaint, issuing the following terse statement:

"The Senate Ethics Committee dismissed a complaint of possible improper conduct made against Sen. Tom Daschle regarding contacts made on behalf of the South Dakota aviation industry. The committee has concluded that contacts and actions by Sen. Daschle and his staff were routine and proper constituent services."

Of course, as with all Senate Ethics Committee probes, the Daschlgate case files were sealed.

Now that the top Senate Democrat has demanded the release of SEC investigative case files gathered during the 1991 probe into President Bush's Harken Energy stock sale, will the Bush White House return the favor, and ask for the release of Ethics Committee's Daschlegate files?

To read the full transcript of interviews with the women who fingered Sen. Daschle as responsible for their husband's deaths, see: Widows told '60 Minutes' Daschle Caused Husbands' Deaths.

Reproduced with the permission of NewsMax.com. All rights reserved

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