On Saturday there were several diaries here (including one of mine) that observed the strange timing and circumstances of the death of Michael Connell in a plane crash outside of Akron at roughly 6:00 PM Friday night. Those diaries engendered much comment, including many comments asserting that raising questions about this incident amounted to a conspiracy theory. They can be found here, and here
Pilots chimed in to discuss the other possible explanations (here)
But now we have a report from the Cleveland affiliate of CBS (via Raw Story here) saying that Connell had been warned by a close friend not to fly his plane, that it might be tampered with, and that twice recently he took those warnings seriously enough to cancel flights. The ante is upped folks. Friday he flew from Washington to Akron and his plane went down.
Again, this may be nothing more than a tragic accident, but the timing on the last Friday night before Christmas, and little more than a month before a new administration takes over the reigns at Justice should be raising questions and should not be ignored. Sensitivity to his family in order but yet as far as I can see, only the Akron Beacon Journal as a mainstream media outlet has reported the larger questions raised by Connell’s death here
To reiterate, Connell was a key witness (albeit a hostile one) in a civil law suit alleging tampering with the election results in Ohio in 2004. Ken Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State is the defendant. Blackwell’s attorneys tried unsuccessfully to have the suit thrown out of Court. Connell tried unsuccessfully to avoid testifying. Attorneys representing his wife appealed to Michael Mukcasey for federal protection for both Connell and his wife saying they had been threatened if they did not take a fall in their testimony. That protection was denied.
It is also worth remembering that in 2004 questions were raised about the Ohio results but at that time both State and Federal governments were under Republican control from top to bottom and every attempt to conduct an investigation was blocked. John Conyers tried but only in an unofficial capacity. This law suit is designed to investigate those questions in a court of law with witnesses under oath. I’m not saying it happened, it may not have, but the persistent efforts to block any close examination of the issue also raise questions.
This is a serious matter. The suit in question alleges that Connell helped fix the election results coming out of Ohio in 04 and gave the presidency to George Bush. Connell also participated in setting up the parallel e-mail system in the White House designed to circumvent the requirement for preserving public documents. If I’m not mistaken, when a Federal Court found that those e-mails were public documents and should be preserved it was claimed that most of them no longer existed, a claim many find not credible.
On the theory that where there is smoke there is fire, well there was a lot of smoke in Akron Friday night when that plane crashed and burned. This is not something that should be swept under the rug, buried in the past while we move forward to a new era.
As the old saying goes "just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be."