From protester to senator, FBI tracked Paul Wellstone

[seemslikeadream]

From protester to senator, FBI tracked Paul Wellstone
By Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public Radio
October 25, 2010

It started with a fingerprint of a 25-year-old college professor who opposed the Vietnam War and ended with a search for his remains, 32 years later, in a wooded area near Eveleth, Minn.

The FBI's files on Paul and Sheila Wellstone, many of which are being made public for the first time, shed new light on the extent of the relationship between the FBI and the political activist who would go on to become a U.S. senator from Minnesota.

Some of the information uncovered in the 219 pages was new to one of his closest confidantes, former Wellstone campaign manager and state director Jeff Blodgett.

The files show that although the FBI initially took interest in Wellstone as part of the broader surveillance of the American left, the agency later served as his protector, investigating death threats the freshman senator received for his views on the first Gulf War, and, in the end, helping sift through the wreckage of the fatal plane crash that killed Wellstone and seven others eight years ago.

Wellstone's surviving sons declined to comment on the documents, which were obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by MPR News.

The U.S. Department of Justice released 88 of the 125 pages in Sen. Wellstone's FBI file, and 131 of the 227 pages in his wife's file. All of the documents included in Sheila Wellstone's file are related to the plane crash that killed the couple and their daughter Marcia.

The FBI did not include 76 pages related to the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that investigated the crash. A request for those records is pending.

DEATH THREATS

Wellstone traveled to Washington, D.C. in January 1991 on the green school bus that became famous in his underdog fight against incumbent Republican Sen. Rudy Boschwitz. He arrived in the middle of a tense debate over the Persian Gulf conflict and, nine days after being sworn in, voted against a resolution authorizing U.S. military force against Iraq.

Angry Callers Threaten to Kill Wellstone, January 1991
Within the first two weeks of his term, Wellstone began receiving death threats for his views on the war. The FBI files provide a detailed description of the angry and sometimes violent calls the Democratic senator received. One man called Wellstone's office and threatened to "throttle" him. A caller from Faribault said, "If I had a gun, I'd come after you, you SOB." Another caller said that if his son dies during his military service in the Persian Gulf, "then Wellstone will die."

The threats alarmed Wellstone's staff, and led the senator's state director, Jeff Blodgett, to contact the FBI and other authorities. An FBI agent recommended that a "trap and trace" be placed on Wellstone's St. Paul office phone line to locate the callers, and Blodgett agreed.

"We were shocked and surprised by these kinds of calls," Blodgett said in an interview last week. "We certainly didn't expect that death threats would be part of the job of being a U.S. senator or taking death threats would be part of the job of Senate staff."


Wellstones at Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Blodgett said Wellstone was saddened by the threats "and as surprised as everyone else was." In his memoir, "Conscience of a Liberal," Wellstone said his fledging political career was spiraling downward within a few short weeks, as he attracted opposition for his views on the Gulf War and for his decision to hold an anti-war press conference next to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

"There were threats on my life," Wellstone wrote. "I wished I had never been elected."

The FBI files indicate that the agency took the threats seriously. Investigators tried to track down the threatening callers and kept detailed information about their efforts.

The documents show that an FBI agent traveled to "Marine," (sic) Minn. on January 29 to meet with the man who threatened to "throttle" Wellstone. The man, whose name has been redacted from the documents, admitted that he called the office and said that he wanted to wring Wellstone's neck and throttle him.

The FBI Taps Wellstone's Phone in Wake of Threats, 1991
Man Calls Sen. Wellstone's Office, Threatens to 'Start Shooting,' 1992
Wellstone Gets Threatening Calls After Radio Program, 1991
The man told the FBI agent that the receptionist was "snotty" and hung up on him. He said he called back and spoke to a "polite receptionist." He told her, "Tell Senator Wellstone that Saddam Hussein appreciates what he's doing."

Federal prosecutors declined to file charges against the caller, and the FBI was unable to locate the other callers. Wellstone continued to receive threats, including a call from a man in February 1995 who said, "I'm watching you senator and I'm going to kill you within the week." Wellstone was assigned a protective detail for the week of the threat.

The FBI Investigates More Death Threats Against Wellstone in 1995
FBI spokesman Steve Warfield declined to comment on the Wellstone files, but Warfield and former FBI agents said that threats against members of Congress are relatively common.

"I would say as active as (Wellstone) was and as liberal as he was and as much as he was against the war, I'd say that's a relatively small number" of threats, said Nick O'Hara, who served as the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Minneapolis office from 1991 to 1994.

O'Hara added that although the number of threats Wellstone received might not have been unusual, it likely took a psychological toll on the junior senator.

"Somebody's who's been in office and is aware of the crank calls that come in might not be as upset as a first-time senator who gets that first call and he starts thinking about his wife and his family," he said.

EYEING AN ACTIVIST

Wellstone did not pursue a traditional path to the U.S. Senate. He formed his political opinions while active in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, and wrote a doctoral dissertation on "Black Militants in the Ghetto: Why They Believe in Violence." In 1969, he moved to Northfield, Minn. to teach political science at Carleton College.


Paul Wellstone at Carleton College
The FBI took note of the bushy-haired college professor when he was arrested on May 7, 1970 at a protest against the Vietnam War at the Federal Office Building in downtown Minneapolis. Wellstone and 87 others were arrested for disturbing and obstructing access to a federal building.

Most of the names in the 1970 documents have been redacted, making it impossible to separate Wellstone out from the other defendants. One defendant pled guilty, another had the charges dismissed, and another was acquitted. The documents state that the rest of the defendants were found guilty during a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis and received fines of either $35 or five days in jail.

Wellstone Arrested at Vietnam War Protest in 1970
The FBI Tracks Court Proceedings Following Vietnam War Protest
Neither the FBI files nor available court records indicate how Wellstone's case was resolved.

In a document sent to FBI headquarters, the head of the FBI's Minneapolis office said the case warranted "considerable investigation." The document notes that U.S. Attorney Robert Renner "could foresee the potential blockage of federal buildings throughout the country" if the anti-war protesters were acquitted.

The FBI obtained a copy of Wellstone's fingerprint card from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office and sent it to FBI headquarters to keep on file. A related FBI document notes that Paul David Wellstone, age 25, weighed 150 pounds, stood 5'6," and had brown hair and brown eyes.

O'Hara, the former head of the FBI's Minneapolis office, said that the FBI used to routinely investigate protests that occurred on federal property.

"There were sit-ins. There were break-ins. There was blood spilled over Selective Service files," he said. "There were a number of minor federal crimes committed. And back then, there maybe wasn't the patience that there might be now."

O'Hara joined the FBI as a special agent in 1963, but did not work in Minnesota until he was transferred to the Minneapolis office in 1991. He said he was not familiar with the arrests.


Sen. Paul Wellstone
Coleen Rowley, the 9/11 whistleblower and former chief legal advisor in the FBI's Minneapolis office, said the documents from 1970 shed light on the FBI's far-reaching efforts to quash political dissent.

"I think this really is valuable … because it's basically history repeating what we have right now," she said, noting the recent FBI raids at the homes of several anti-war organizers in Minneapolis.

Wellstone's arrest occurred less than a year before the official end of Cointelpro, a series of secret domestic surveillance programs created by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to monitor and disrupt groups deemed to be a threat to national security. When the operation got underway in the 1950s it focused on suspected communists, but by the 1960s it had expanded to include broader groups, including civil rights organizers and anti-war protesters. Hoover ordered an end to Cointelpro operations in April of 1971, after news of the programs started to leak.


Paul and Sheila Wellstone
"So '70 would've hit you right in the midst of this," Rowley said. "In fact, that probably was the peak of the time when this was going on."

As for Wellstone, Blodgett said the senator "would've probably chuckled at it because he was exercising his free speech rights as an American and would've thought it was funny that the FBI would've taken notice of that and put it into a file somewhere."

Blodgett added, "You would think they'd have better things to do with their time."

Wellstone's fingerprint card remained on file, and his activism continued. In the two decades leading up to his Senate race, he helped organize poor families and farmers in rural Minnesota, and was once arrested for trespassing during a foreclosure protest at a bank in 1984. None of these activities are mentioned in the FBI files released by the Department of Justice.

A FINAL INVESTIGATION

When a plane carrying Wellstone, his wife, daughter, and three staffers crashed near Eveleth, Minn. on October 25, 2002, the FBI was among the first agencies to respond.


Wellstone plane crash scene
The plane crash occurred 11 days before the end of a tight Senate race between Wellstone and his Republican opponent Norm Coleman, spurring a flurry of conspiracy theories that the crash was not an accident.

The NTSB would later find that the crash was caused by pilot error, but the FBI pursued several criminal leads in the first two days of the investigation, according to the documents obtained by MPR News.

The plane crashed at 10:21 a.m. The documents indicate two agents from the FBI's satellite office in Duluth "immediately responded to the crash site," but don't specify what time they arrived. The agents assisted local authorities, who had already secured the area after determining there were no survivors, and waited for the NTSB team to arrive.

The FBI Opens Its Investigation of the Fatal Plane Crash
The FBI Pursues Criminal Leads in Plane Crash Investigation
The FBI files recount how agents from Bemidji and a group of 11 officials from Minneapolis arrived at the scene later that day. One of the Duluth agents jotted down the names of the deceased, and took notes on potential problems with de-icing equipment. The agent's handwritten pages span four days and provide an inside look into the investigation. The agent notes that the initial search found "no cockpit voice recorder" and "no bullet holes."

Eight members of an FBI evidence response team spent two days searching the wreckage. They assisted with an initial search for aircraft parts and the flight data recorder, and then helped retrieve human remains and personal items - watches, rings, campaign buttons, keys, and coins.

The FBI files reveal, for the first time, the specific criminal leads pursued by investigators.

FBI agents investigated the claims of a caller from Jacksonville, Florida, who said that members of the American Trucking Association had planned to disconnect the plane's de-icers. The man said that Wellstone had been trying to schedule Senate hearings to expose organized crime in the trucking industry. In response to the call, a Wellstone staff member asked a Labor Committee member and a legislative director "who both indicated that they were not aware of any Senate hearing being scheduled to discuss this topic." The rest of the document has been redacted.

The FBI Investigates Threatening Postcard Sent to Wellstone's Office
Agents also obtained a threatening postcard sent to Wellstone's St. Paul office the day before the plane crash. The handwritten postcard said, in part, "We need to gut (sic) the word out for the snipper (sic) to go after people like you, not real Americans … This voter fraud you propose will get you dead."

An FBI agent noted that the handwriting and stamp were similar to those sent to two members of the U.S. House of Representatives who, along with Wellstone, voted against the October 2002 resolution authorizing the Iraq War.

FBI agents also interviewed a former employee of Executive Aviation, the company that employed the pilots who died in the crash. A heavily redacted report describes a conversation between an FBI agent and the former employee regarding a November 2000 incident at the company's airplane hangar.

An FBI Agent Describes Initial Investigation Into Fatal Plane Crash
The FBI Compiles Maps of the Plane Crash Site Near Eveleth
The FBI Investigates the Pilots of Crashed Plane
At a closed meeting the night of the crash, the NTSB directed the investigation, with assistance from the FBI and law enforcement agencies. During the initial investigation, NTSB investigators noted several problems that the agency would later identify as key factors in the crash, including the plane's low speed, unusual sharp left turn, and the lack of any apparent problems with the plane's equipment.

FBI agents met with the lead investigator for the NTSB the following day and handed over the results of its investigation. The NTSB investigator said the agency would continue to examine the wreckage for any sign of damage to the plane, including the deicing equipment, and would interview local witnesses and investigate any previous issues with Executive Aviation.

The NTSB said it would "advise the FBI if its investigation revealed any indication that the crash was due to anything other than accidental causes."


'Soul of the Senate'
The Duluth FBI agents and the Evidence Recovery Team left the crash site on October 28, and the FBI files do not refer to any subsequent investigations.

Blodgett said that he was unaware of the FBI's investigation, but said he was not surprised.

"It's actually heartening to hear that they were extremely thorough in following every lead to make sure it was tied up," he said.

The FBI received the NTSB's final report on the plane crash in April 2004. The report brought the FBI's decades-long relationship with Wellstone to an end.

The final document states, "Inasmuch as no indication of criminal activity was indicated after exhaustive examination and analysis by the NTSB which warrants further FBI investigation, this case is considered CLOSED at Minneapolis."

The FBI Gathers Newspaper Articles About the Fatal Crash
Duluth FBI Agent Documents Travel to Crash Site
NTSB Issues Final Crash Report, FBI Closes Case

[justdrew]

interesting comments over here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/revealed-fbi-investigated-threat-senator-wellstones-plane-deadly-crash/

some guy named "ce _ ss _ na _ dri _ ver" is just all over it with the conspiracy damping routine. possibly a good chance to engage with a pro? lol I don't know, but he doesn't seem to agree with my microwave/emp hypothesis.

[Bruce Dazzling]

interesting comments over here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/revealed-fbi-investigated-threat-senator-wellstones-plane-deadly-crash/

some guy named "ce _ ss _ na _ dri _ ver" is just all over it with the conspiracy damping routine. possibly a good chance to engage with a pro? lol I don't know, but he doesn't seem to agree with my microwave/emp hypothesis.

Aircraft could be brought down by DIY 'E-bombs'

Via New Scientist
April 1, 2009

http://cryptogon.com/?p=7814

ELECTROMAGNETIC pulse weapons capable of frying the electronics in civil airliners can be built using information and components available on the net, warn counterterrorism analysts.

All it would take to bring a plane down would be a single but highly energetic microwave radio pulse blasted from a device inside a plane, or on the ground and trained at an aircraft coming in to land.

Yael Shahar, director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, and her colleagues have analysed electromagnetic weapons in development or used by military forces worldwide, and have discovered that there is low-cost equipment available online that can act in similar ways. “These will become more of a threat as the electromagnetic weapons technology matures,” she says.

For instance, the US and Russian military have developed electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warheads that create a radio-frequency shockwave. The radio pulse creates an electric field of many hundreds of thousands of volts per metre, which induces currents that burn out nearby electrical systems, such as microchips and car electronics.

Speculation persists that such “e-bombs” have been used in the Persian Gulf, and in Kosovo and Afghanistan – but this remains unconfirmed. But much of what the military is doing can be duplicated by others, Shahar says. “Once it is known that aircraft are vulnerable to particular types of disruption, it isn’t too much of a leap to build a device that can produce that sort of disruption. And much of this could be built from off-the-shelf components or dual-use technologies.”

For example, government labs use high-energy EMP devices to test what would happen to critical electronic systems if a nuclear weapon detonated, generating a vast electromagnetic pulse, says Robert Iannini, founder of Information Unlimited in Amherst, New Hampshire, which sells EMP test systems.

EMPs can be created in a number of ways. A machine called a Marx generator can quickly dump an extremely high charge stored in a bank of capacitors into an antenna, which then releases a highly energetic radio pulse. Devices like this are often used to test power lines for their resistance to lightning strikes. An alternative, known as a flux compression device, uses a small explosive to push an armature through a current-carrying coil that is generating a magnetic field. This compresses the magnetic field, again producing a devastating EMP.

Iannini says his company only sells such devices to legitimate buyers. “The only people that buy these things are qualified researchers at labs like Sandia. They never find their way into the labs of pseudo or amateur scientists,” he says. “If we get any unknown overseas purchaser we immediately alert the office of export enforcement at the US Department of Commerce.”

But Shahar told delegates at the annual Directed Energy Weapons conference in London last month that security at some labs can be lax, while basic EMP generators can be built from descriptions available online, using components found in devices such as digital cameras. “These are technologically unchallenging to build and most of the information necessary is available,” she says.

The increasing use of carbon-fibre reinforced composite in aircraft fuselages is also making them more vulnerable, she says, because composites provide poor shielding against electromagnetic radiation compared with metal. “What is needed is extensive shielding of electronic components and the vast amount of cables running down the length of the aircraft,” she says.

Jerome Bruel, an electrical systems expert at the European Aviation Safety Agency in Cologne, Germany, agrees that newer all-composite planes like the Airbus A350 will probably need some means of protecting their cabling from all radio energy sources, including TV transmitters. “They may need a metal mesh surrounding them to absorb interference,” he says.

Douglas Beason, a director at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, says it may be straightforward to build a do-it-yourself EMP weapon, but more difficult to make one that can be stowed in an aircraft. “A lot of work would need to go into dramatically decreasing the weight, shrinking the power supply and antenna,” he says.

Nevertheless, governments are taking the threat seriously. A spokesperson at the UK Department of Transport said the government is well aware of this security issue and has close links with agencies “able to provide a balanced picture in regards to EMP weapons, and their potential to compromise civilian aircraft”.

[Stephen Morgan]

Something from my hard drive, long gone from the web:

Airplanes and ray guns

It is not as simple as you might think.

By nessie

There are any number of reasons why the propaganda machine of the corporate-government complex is glossing over the threat of radio-frequency terrorist weapons and focusing instead on rogue state missiles, suitcase nukes and bio-war. The charitable analysis holds that the powers that be prefer not to put any ideas into the heads of aspiring potential terrorists. This would be a lot more believable if the same propaganda machine didn't constantly complain about the ease with which bomb plans and drug recipes may be found on the Internet. Anybody who ever wished to build a bomb or cook some black-market drugs, but didn't know how, now knows where to find out. The corporate-government complex's mass media monopoly has drummed it into our heads.

As the old adage succinctly states, if you can bake a cake you can build a bomb. It's just not that difficult, nor are ingredients difficult to acquire. The same goes for at least some drugs. It's a sorry fool indeed who cannot manage to nurture a hemp plant to maturity. Methamphetamine can be made from ingredients available at the grocery, drugstore, and hardware. But what about radio-frequency weapons? Are these supposedly high-tech contraptions, like nuclear bombs, beyond the capabilities of the run-of-the-mill, wanna-be terrorist? Do their construction require resources and skills that you, gentle reader, can never hope to acquire? Hardly.

The parts are readily available, and often very cheap. The plans, like those for bombs and drug labs , are only a mouse click away.

Consider the Marx generator. A Marx generator is a clever way of charging a number of capacitors in parallel, then discharging them in series. It was originally developed in 1924. Marx generators are a common way of generating high voltage impulses for testing when the voltage level required is higher than available charging supply voltages. It is often the second half of a HERF gun. To see just how easy it is to learn how to build one, click here, here, here, here and here.

If you want to learn how to build the rest of a HERF gun, you're going to have to research it yourself. I'm not going to help because I don't think you should be doing things like employing radio frequency weapons to commit acts of terrorism. Of course, if you really, really want to do it, my lack of help certainly isn't going to stop you. It's not rocket science. It's not even brain surgery. And as you can see, the necessary information isn't even close to secret. I'm only telling you this much to illustrate the absurdity of believing that mass media's virtual blackout on RF weapons is in any way based on a desire to keep this information out of the wrong hands. Besides, it already is in the wrong hands.

Then there are those mischievous pranksters out there who may be contemplating some non violent use for the HERF gun. You know who I'm talking about. They are the artists who alter billboards and the monkey wrenchers who chainsaw billboards to the ground. It's only a matter of time before some of these folks turn to electronics as away to express themselves. We can only hope that their predilection for non violence stems from a sense of responsibility to the public, and translates to extreme caution and technical competence before they start blasting away.

There are certainly cases in life where vandalism is not only justified, it's required. And art never needs justification. But terrorism is quite another matter, particularly where the lives of working folks are at stake. And remember, even the most sublime prank is no substitute for the planet wide, grass roots organizing that is our only hope for a safe, sane, consensual future.

There is a far more sinister explanation for why we are not being told about the potential terrorist uses for RF weapons. Whether it is the correct explanation remains to be seen, but we must at least consider it. Could RF weapons already have been brought into use by terrorists? If so, could we realistically expect the government to tell us the truth about it?

As we saw last time, it is highly likely that HERF guns have been used for the purpose of extortion. It's too easy to do and the potential profits are too great ignore. We also learned that at least one HERF gun has been definitely used at least once for the purpose of fraud. But what we do not know is how many times (if any) the use of RF weapons has been covered up by blaming what happened on computer glitches, hackers, or wires chewed through by rodents. This is not to say that computer glitches, hackers and rodents never effect our information infrastructure or even the power grid. They do. But that in no way means that HERF guns aren't also part of the picture.

Until some terrorists take credit for it in public, we are unlikely to learn the truth. The problem is simple. The primary reason that people go along with governments, even to the point of working as de facto slaves for several days a week to pay their bills, is so that those governments will protect them. To a certain extent, governments do. Government is, above all else, a protection racket. Governments protect their citizens primarily from other governments. They also at least go through the motions of protecting citizens from criminals, terrorists in particular. Modern technology has placed in criminal and terrorist hands weapons against which there are no defenses. As this gradually sinks in to the public consciousness, people's willingness to pay for protection they aren't receiving will inevitably come into question.

Let's examine one possible use of RF weaponry that fits easily into established terrorist patterns. Can HERF be used as an anti-aircraft weapon? This disturbing possibility has been largely overlooked so far by the virtual cottage industry of conspiracy theorists that has sprung up around such well known but mysterious airline crashes as TWA 800 and Swissair 111.

Whenever any airliner crashes for non obvious reasons, conspiracy theories flood the net. In part this is because a large segment of the population is prudently hesitant to believe the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, or anyone else who speaks for America's federal government. No one who pays attention to such things is even surprised when the CIA, the FBI, the BATF, the FDA, the IRS, or the DEA discredit themselves. But even the staunchest supporter of America's government must admit it's a pretty sorry state of affairs when we can't even trust the NTSB and the FAA. But, alas, it has come to that.

The government has no one to blame but itself for our dwindling trust. As the old Yankee proverb so succinctly puts it, "Trick me once, shame on you. Trick me twice, shame on me." Only the most fanatic, ill informed and intellectually challenged still give the official version of any event the benefit of the doubt whatsoever. These days smart folks look deeper.

This was not always the case. Distrust of official pronouncements was once the near exclusive purview of political extremists, paranoid schizophrenics, and anarchists. These days, virtually anything that happens in the media for non obvious reasons sparks a frenzy of citizen doubt and detective work. Airline crashes in particular capture the public imagination. The sheer horror of ordinary people dying in mass strikes home in way that no single death, not even the public murder of a celebrity, can. Add to that the government's well documented history of one bogus pronouncement after another, and even the slightest discrepancy can take on enormous proportion.

See for yourself. Sit sown some evening and ask your favorite search engine about TWA 800 , or even Swissair 111. Fix a little sandwich and brew a pot of coffee first, though, and don't plan on getting to bed too early. Don't expect any help from me, either. Sorry, but I have no idea what brought down those planes. Unlike some people, I'm willing to admit it. I'm not about to endorse some extant theory. Nor am I about to make a case for either plane having been brought down by terrorists wielding some Buck Rogers style ray gun, either.

I do find it extremely interesting, however, that electromagnetic interference has played so small a role in the panoply of possible explanations that have been put forth. I had rather expected more of the independent research community. We are generally known for doing our homework. Perhaps some of us have become overly preoccupied with the conspiratorial machinations of the overlapping cabals that populate the world's parapolitical landscape. But it's not all about plotters and backstabbers, corruption and cover-ups. It's also about the technology at the disposal of the welter of cabals that pull our strings. Cloaks and daggers went out with the bustle and buggy whip. This is not to say that back room deals and dirty tricks are no longer the backbone of the nation state. Clearly they are. But technological innovation has been opened up the range of possibilities to a degree that was scarcely conceivable to conspiracy buffs of even a generation or two ago.

Even accidental EM interference can be deadly to a plane in flight. The FAA is certainly aware of the danger. Their training course for personnel who will be involved in managing, planning design, executing high energy radio frequency (HERF), testing, analysis, and certification lasts eighteen hours. We who seek the truth would behoove ourselves to at spend least that much time learning the subject. It wouldn't hurt read up of related topics, either.

TWA 800 and Swissair 111 are by no means the only air crashes that have drawn widespread suspicion. But they easily rank with Amelia Earhart and Pan Am 103 when it comes to the variety of explanations that have been proffered. Bombs, missiles, lasers, even space debris have been considered. Even passenger lists draw attention. Conspiratorially inclined AIDS dissidents note that Dr. Jonathan Mann, who became known as the outspoken head of the World Health Organization's AIDS program when the disease exploded in the 1980s, was among the 229 people killed in the crash of Swissair 111. So was his wife, Mary-Lou Clements-Mann, also was a noted AIDS researcher who taught at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. She was working on developing AIDS vaccines. Coincidence? Probably, but in today's world, we can never be entirely sure. Billions of dollars in pharmaceutical patent license fees are a tempting motive, and life is notoriously cheap. It takes more than a motive to make a solid murder case. But a motive is enough to raise some suspicions.

TWA 800 is an even bigger can of worms. The shear number of eye witnesses makes a substantial case for some kind of missile strike. This is not to say that we should always believe an eyewitness. Far from it. But there are a great deal many more eye witnesses than it would take to indict you or me for any crime. And if it were a missile, what was it doing there? Two of the most likely explanations are an intentional launch, probably by terrorists, and an accident, probably in the course of military maneuvers. These are also two of the least likely explanations to generate a straight story by the government. If it was terrorists, did they get the missiles from the CIA? We know the CIA armed the Afghan mujahadeen with Stingers. Many are still unaccounted for. The altitude of the TWA 800 explosion rules out Stingers as a possible cause, but we can't help but wonder what other kinds of missiles that our tax money has paid to place in terrorist hands. Just because we haven't heard about it yet doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

If it was the military who was responsible for the missile, a particular individual gave the order. Independent investigators have a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa's body than they do of learning this officer's name. And that's if he exists at all. Anybody who doubts the ability of the government, particularly the military, to keep a secret for a very long time, would do well to read up on the history of the Manhattan Project.

But the big question is why, after all these years, people are still asking these kinds of questions. The answer is simple. Consider the source. Besides, questioning the government is the very essence of democracy at work. It's more than a right. It's a duty. To accept the government's word without question is to refuse to participate in the democratic process. Without our direct participation there is no democracy.

Which brings us to philosopher Elaine Scarry. She is not generally known as a conspiracy theorist. She is the author of On Beauty and Being Just. She recently received the Truman Capote Prize for Dreaming by the Book. She teaches at Harvard, where she is completing a study of war and the social contract. Writing in the September 21, 2000 issue of the New York Review of Books, Scarry raises some questions about electromagnetic interference that the NTSB really should answer. Don't hold your breath.

In two years and two months that separates the TWA 800 and Swissair 111 accidents close to 18 million airplanes took off from American airports Two of those 18 million departures led to an apparent electrical catastrophe. Those two flights could have originated from two different airports anywhere in the country. But as it happens, both planes took off from a single airport, JFK. They could have taken off on any two days of the week and at any two minutes of the day. But as it happens, both took off on a Wednesday at 8:19 PM. Coincidence? Perhaps. But at the very least it merits further research.

The literature on electromagnetic interference is full of stories about unwanted electrical upsets that recur in the same space at the same time. Scarry cites one example, a company that found that its computers crashed every Friday at 3:00 PM. The cause turned out to be a piece of mowing equipment that was turned on at 3:00 PM each Friday during the summer. When electromagnetic interference happens only a single time, it often remains an unsolved mystery. Electromagnetic interference problems that recur irregularly and/or in widely separate locations are also notoriously difficult to solve. But when the event recurs at an exact time and place, it may become clear that, as in the case of the computer and the mowing machine, the problem is arising from something outside, something on a regular enough schedule, that its responsibility can eventually be tracked down.

According to Scarry, TWA 800 and Swissair 111 share at least five features:

(1) a grave electrical accident, (2) a so far indecipherable cause, (3) a takeoff from the same airport and a route across the same geography, (4) a takeoff on the same minute of the day and day of the week, and (5) the malfunctioning of its radios beginning at almost the same time (somewhere in the three-minute interval between 8:31 and 8:34).

Consider also that on the night when TWA 800 fell, a Navy P3, flying out of Brunswick, Maine, had crossed the plane's path fifteen seconds before TWA 800 lost its transponder, voice recorder, and data recorder. Though it had a safe flight, the P3 reported on its return that it lost the use of various pieces of electrical equipment during the flight.

Are these a set of interesting but ultimately insignificant coincidences, asks Scarry, or are they instead features that together might expose the cause of the accidents? Perhaps the route is a clue. Any plane on its way from JFK to northern Europe must thread its way through a maze of military warning zones. The boundaries of each zone are marked on aviation maps. They are labeled with the letter "W" followed by a number. Where the map has room, a printed sentence appears inside the zone: "Warning: National Defense Operations Area, Operations hazardous to the flight of aircraft conducted within this area."

Any number of "operations hazardous to the flight of aircraft" come to mind. Electromagnetic weaponry is by no means the only possibility, far from it. My best guess is that, if anything, Scarry's revelations seem to suggest otherwise. Something more like case of the computer and the mowing machine seems to be what we are looking at here. A more paranoid mind might suggest it was an act of foul play timed to look like one. I don't think so. But I'm guessing, and so are most of the pundits out there.

There is one virtual certainty about these cases, though. You are highly unlikely to learn the truth from the NTSB, the FAA, or any branch of the military. If you want the truth, you're going to have to work for it. Study every scrap of evidence dredged up by the ordinary citizen sleuths who have flocked to the cause. Better still, you should join them. File Freedom of Information Act requests. Debrief witnesses. Study the pictorial record. Learn the technology. Don't let these cases die.

But before you go any further, you should consider the long historical background of electromagnetic interference with flight, especially in and around the New York area. It goes back quite a while. As you may recall, the Denver Post, on May 26, 1935, on Page one reported:

Airplane pilots making flight in this vicinity have asked the department of commerce to investigate a supposed radio-ray device which they believe stops the motors of airplanes passing over New York city.

The airplanes, flying over the central part of Manhattan, have had mysterious troubles with their engines during the last few months. As a result, belief is spreading in aeronautical circles here that some short-wave experimenter has developed a "Z-ray" which interferes with the workings of airplane motors at which it is aimed.

A peculiar thing about the occurrences is that the planes' motors simply "go dead" without apparent cause, and when they are examined later, it is seldom possible to determine what was wrong. Twice, however, electrical parts have been found to be burned out, as if by a heavy current of electricity.

Several times disasters have narrowly been avoided . . .

Which brings us to Nicola Tesla's so-called "death ray." But that's another story. Stay tuned.

[Elvis]

One man called Wellstone's office and threatened to "throttle" him. A caller from Faribault said, "If I had a gun, I'd come after you, you SOB." Another caller said that if his son dies during his military service in the Persian Gulf, "then Wellstone will die."

I'm picturing Dick Cheney holding a scarf over a phone receiver and disguising his voice, "...there will be consequences..."

[seemslikeadream]

One man called Wellstone's office and threatened to "throttle" him. A caller from Faribault said, "If I had a gun, I'd come after you, you SOB." Another caller said that if his son dies during his military service in the Persian Gulf, "then Wellstone will die."

I'm picturing Dick Cheney holding a scarf over a phone receiver and disguising his voice, "...there will be consequences..."

Cheney = Halliburton = W.R.Grace = ASBESTOS = dead Wellstone