GOP consultant killed in plane crash was warned of sabotage: report

[DemoTex]

Source: TheRawStory

The Republican consultant accused of involvement in alleged vote-rigging in Ohio in 2004 was warned that his plane might be sabotaged before his death in a crash Friday night, according to a Cleveland CBS affiliate.

45-year-old Republican operative Michael Connell was killed when his single-passenger plane crashed Friday into a home in a suburb of Akron, Ohio. The consultant was called to testify in federal court regarding a lawsuit alleging that he took part in tampering with Ohio's voting results in the 2004 election.

Without getting into specific details, 19 Action News reporter Blake Renault reported Sunday evening that 45-year-old Republican operative and experienced pilot had been warned not to fly his plane in the days before the crash.

"Connell...was apparently told by a close friend not to fly his plane because his plane might be sabotaged," Renault said. "And twice in the last two months Connell, who is an experienced pilot, cancelled two flights because of suspicious problems with his plane."



Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Killed_GOP_pilot_suspected_plane_had_1222.html

---

Will there be a thorough and objective investigation? Consider this: All five members of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are Bu$h loyalists and Bu$h appointees, AND the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is part of the Bu$h Executive Branch.

http://www.ntsb.gov/Abt_NTSB/member.htm

:scared:

[Pale Blue Dot]

1. OK, now there's a little bit of evidence.

It's heresay at this point, but it should be investigated.

[Celebration]

11. These sources are probably just going by

the Velvet Revolution press release. This has exactly the same info in it.

[creeksneakers2]

18. That's what I suspected

The "friend" was in fact Velvet Revolution, who is making the claim after the fact.

[acmavm]

14. You're right, it is inadmissable. Now. But that grease spot on

the ground that used to be a living, breathing human being lends credibility to the story.

You know what's funny? Faux would have been off and running with this story, in fact, they would have named the culprit, tried and convicted him all in one 'newscast' IF this guy was going to testify against the democrats.

[HopeHoops]

45. If the guy was going to testify against a Democrat, it would be LIVE 24x7 COVERAGE FROM ARUBA!

Anything to get Geraldo out of the studio.

[Dennis Donovan]

2. Hi Mac - I encourage you to participate in my thread on this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4695148

I was hoping you'd see it.:hi:

[Dennis Donovan]

3. Did he own his own plane?

I didn't know this. I believe the plane involved in the accident - a PA-32R-301T - was a rental:

http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNumSQL.asp?NNumbertxt=9299N&cmndfind.x=15&cmndfind.y=8

N9299N

Aircraft Description

Serial Number 3257018
Type Registration Corporation
Manufacturer Name PIPER
Certificate Issue Date 08/21/2007
Model PA-32R-301T
Status Valid
Type Aircraft Fixed Wing Single-Engine
Type Engine Reciprocating
Pending Number Change None
Dealer No
Date Change Authorized None
Mode S Code 53161471
MFR Year 1997
Fractional Owner NO


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Registered Owner

Name SIERRA-NOVEMBER AVIATION INC
Street 3046 BRECKSVILLE RD
City RICHFIELD State OHIO Zip Code 44286-9399
County SUMMIT
Country UNITED STATES

[Aviation Pro]

22. A rental Saratoga?

Doubt it. Too much of an insurance liability.

[Dennis Donovan]

34. They don't rent complex single-engine aircraft anymore?

At 3MY, we rented a C210, but that was 15 years ago.

Perhaps he borrowed it?:shrug:

[Aviation Pro]

55. Complex single engine, yes, if it's a Piper Arrow....

...a 300 HP, high performance, turbocharged Saratoga, highly unlikely.

[Ikonoklast]

44. Just a shell leasing corporation.

Located in the same building that New Media and all his other businesses are located.
I'd be fairly certain that the equipment leasing business is owned by him, or a member of his immediate family.


I know the building well, drive by it frequently.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=3046+BRECKSVILLE+RD,+RICHFIELD+OHIO&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=33.901528,55.546875&ie=UTF8&ll=41.219598,-81.639662&spn=0.00786,0.013561&t=h&z=16&g=3046+BRECKSVILLE+RD,+RICHFIELD+OHIO&iwloc=addr

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. Ok, Mr. BBQ Pilot, sir. About time you chimed in on this.

Considering the make of plane, the experience level of the pilot and the reported anti-icing gear onboard, what is your assessment of the likelyhood of this being an ice-induced event?

Your input on this will be a valuable service to the DU community.

And Happy Holidays, you old Pirate of The Air. ;-)

[Dennis Donovan]

6. It's been established the aircraft wasn't equipped with de-icing boots...

Pic of the actuall Saratoga

It was also fuel injected, meaning impossible for carb ice to cause inflight powerplant failure - ON EDIT: but, as DemoTex pointed out in my thread - induction icing ISN'T impossible.

[yourguide]

16. everyone keeps assuming icing was involved

reports from the ground report cold conditions. no ice.

[Dennis Donovan]

17. Not at altitude...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4695148&mesg_id=4701453

[djp2]

26. Single passenger plane?

The article says "Single passenger plane"... This certainly isn't one.

[Dennis Donovan]

30. They forgot the word "engine"

[Aviation Pro]

56. The weeping wing of a PA-32 Saratoga......

...is no defense in known icing conditions. Piper specifically states this on their web site and more importantly, in Section 2 (Limitations), that the aircraft is not certified for known icing conditions.

[xchrom]

5. recommend

[Double T]

7. If it looks like rovian sabotage, sounds like rovian sabotage and smells like rovian sabotage

then it must be rovian so!!! I'm channeling Ron Brown and he is confirming my suspicions.

[Dennis Donovan]

8. This is bigger than Rove...

Given Connell was going to offer testimony that would put the legitimacy of the entire 2004 election in doubt, there's MANY who wanted to see him silenced.

Motive has been established - the facts surrounding the actual accident haven't.

[Karenina]

10. Ya think the guy a had problem with

COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS?

[Dennis Donovan]

12. Not really - he had a license, so he chose to fly himself...

If I were truly worried for my safety, I'd choose a commercial flight over my own aircraft knowing it would be a lot harder to sabotage.

[Karenina]

19. Well, yeah.

:freak: Sure as shit if I had BFEE after my ass, I wouldn't trust my own Rollerblades. :freak::shrug:

[ptolle]

36. coincidence?

Buzzflash this morning is carrying a report from oped news relating the many convenient deaths of people involved in recent elections and electronic voting machines.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Check-out-all-these-unexpe-by-Pokey-Anderson-081221-175.html
If the incoming administration establishes any one tradition I hope it is that cases such as these get a thorough investigation and an equally thorough airing of the results of said investigations and that any and ll leads are followed to their logical ends.That would of course be in addition to the prosecution of bush/cheney for war crimes.

[Bucky]

53. Rovian? I don't know of any accusation of Rove sabotaging planes

Karl Rove does political slander not airplane sabotage. About the only illegal things he's accused of involve vote suppression efforts.

I don't discount the possibility that this guy was killed to keep him quiet, but it's not exactly Rove's trademark to have people whacked. You may need to come up with a more credible Moriarty for your all-purpose conspiracy mastermind.

[Double T]

60. Never underestimate the dirty deeds of a psychopath.

They are capable of everything.

[stubtoe]

9. "Are you sure you want to recommend this thread?"

Hell, YES.

A convenient death on the way to testify about vote tampering in '04. This is not suspicious, it's blatant.

[Cheap_Trick]

21. Sadly, there's many here who refuse the see the obvious

and would just tell you to put another layer of tinfoil over your head.

[Dennis Donovan]

23. Facts help, too...

It's important to have facts when determining if there was foul-play involved. That's not to say there WASN'T motive - which there most certainly was.

[Cheap_Trick]

28. But when we're given the "facts" of this incident

we need to look at who is giving us those facts. I have to take ANYTHING told to me by ANYONE connected to this mis-administration with a grain of salt the size of Texas.

[Dennis Donovan]

29. True. That's why I started this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4695148

[liberal N proud]

13. I am trying to figure out why one would get in a plane that

either they thought was tampered with or was warned that it had been tampered with.

[unpossibles]

15. I wondered about that too. Then I remembered that

anyone dumb enough to work for Rove, Bush, et all, perhaps isn't too bright to begin with, or may be smart but fails to think things through.

[Whoa_Nelly]

20. Wouldn't Connell have had documentation of the vote rigging?

If he was going to testify, seems he would have had a paper trail of evidence somewhere, possibly back up copy, and maybe someone else who would know how to access all that.

RIP Michael Connell
Hoping the truth still sees the light of day.

[get the red out]

24. Thousands and thousands killed in two wars + 1.

Media says: Who killed little Caylee?

[Ysabela]

25. K&R. Media Blackout is trying to BURY this story. The Netroots must keep it alive! n/t

[nc4bo]

27. Was flipping the remote yesterday and it landed on a rerun of JFK, helluva coincicence, eh?

I gotta shiver go down my spine.

But yea, M$M are trying to ignore the elephant in the room (again).

Netroots are chattering away (again) leaving M$M in the dust (again).

I just hope the chatter forces them to talk about that elephant.

[mod mom]

31. Surprisingly good TV Coverage:

don't have time to se if this was posted elsewhere:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24TCUbKFnh0

[mod mom]

32. Also Coverage from the UK:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3885913/George-Bush-aide-dies-in-plane-crash.html


George Bush aide dies in plane crash

Mystery surrounds the death of a Republican pollster, recently compelled to give evidence about alleged election fraud in the 2004 election in Ohio, after he was killed in a plane crash.


By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 8:57PM GMT 21 Dec 2008

Top internet strategist Michael Connell, 45, was the only person in his single-engine private plane that crashed three miles short of the Akron-Canton airport on Friday night as he prepared to land after flying from College Park, Maryland, close to Washington.

He had worked on Mr Bush's two presidential campaigns, advised John McCain this year and was also linked to allegedly missing White House emails in the 2006 controversy over a string of firings of US attorneys.

The death of the married father of four immediately triggered conspiracy theories amid speculation that he had been about to reveal embarrassing details of the complicity of senior members of the Bush administration in fixing an election and destroying incriminating emails.

In a blog posting entitled "One of my sources died in a plane crash last night...", Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story revealed that Mr Connell had been talking to her about the Ohio case alleging that vote-tampering during the 2004 presidential election resulted in civil rights violations.

-snip

[babsbunny]

33. Keith Olbermann might report on this?

I haven't seen this on any news channel! I want to SCREAM!!!!

[mnhtnbb]

35. No report of Connell's death in our local media that I've seen.

[Baby Snooks]

37. Who cares?

Did anyone care about Dorothy Kilgallen? No. It was too easy to "believe" the "official" explanation. Despite the fact that she was found dead in bed with a book in her lap. Obviously had been reading and had taken too many pills. The problem is most people who commit suicide don't take the pills and then decide to read a book. So maybe it was an accidental overdose. The problem is her reading glasses were found downstairs. Whoever murdered her didn't know she used reading glasses.

People are murdered every day in this country to not only shut them up but to shut up everyone else who knows they were murdered and why.

And not just by the Republicans. But of course god forbid we should suspect the Clintons of such a thing. In fact, we should.

Who cares? The few who do will not come forward. The even fewer who do come forward will be dismissed as lunatics and conspiracy theorists.

[Norrin Radd]

38. kr

[Ilsa]

39. I hope his family mentions that

"He was Wellstoned by his buddies," in his eulogy.

The Karl Rove Republicans are dangerous people.

[AntiFascist]

40. Wow, this just got very interesting ! n/t

[JohnWxy]

41. I wonder if his murder will be investigated. Is ohio attorney general Repub?

If ohio attorney general is Repub forget it. NO investigation.

warned plane might be sabotaged. PRobably Bill Clinton did it!

Recommended.


You can be sure this will never hit the airwaves of NBC, CBS or ABC. This is nearly as substantive as the Vince Foster "case" - on which they spent hours of mindless discussions about a Republican generated myth-rumor.

[JohnWxy]

42. Arnebeck warned Justice that Connell's safety was in jeopardy - requsting witness protection for him

"Arnebeck warned the Justice Department that Connell's safety was in jeopardy earlier this year. In July, he wrote an email to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, requesting witness protection for the GOP operative"

[yy4me]

43. As I read the stories about this crash, I keep wondering , who was

the friend who "Warned" him and where did that friend get his information?

After being given a warning and after two prior incidents, I'm sure Connell checked everything that should have been checked. I hope this gets an unbiased and thorough investigation. Perhaps Mr. Connell left one of the "in case something happens to me" letters with his lawyer. Is the government giving his wife protection?

What a state we are in. Nothing that happens cannot go without investigation if it comes anywhere near **** and company.

[HopeHoops]

46. Yeah, and we all (wink, wink) know the DC Madam (nudge, nudge) committed suicide!

[benld74]

47. IF he was warned,, and he STILL flew, then DUMBASS for sure!

[Jakes Progress]

50. Kind of crass.

Of course they killed him. It seems he rigged elections, but this isn't a video game. We are talking about a dead person - a fellow human being.

As for being a dumbass. Let's just suppose someone on DU warns you not to drive your car. You go out and a bus hits you. I guess that makes you a dumbass. Class up a little.

[rhett o rick]

48. We need an independent investigator immediately, before Rove covers up the evidence. nm

[rhett o rick]

49. Has this been covered at all by the corp-media? nm

[MADem]

51. If someone told me my plane was likely to be sabotaged, I wouldn't

get in the plane, unless, perhaps, I wanted to kill myself so my spouse could get my life insurance.

It's not as though the guy couldn't have travelled to DC on a commercial aircraft.

The name of the close friend, and the context of the discussion, would also be helpful.

[SpiralHawk]

52. k and r

eom

[ooglymoogly]

54. I note the cleanup crew is already out in force on these posts....nt

[ileus]

57. I knew it.

[mitchum]

58. When you lie down with dogs...you may never get up

[Junkdrawer]

59. The two take-away messages are:

1.) If you rat out BushCo, you're dead...

2.) If you perform dirty deeds for BushCo, you're expendable...

[Ian David]

61. Darwin Award? n/t

[Lucian]

62. And people here think conspiracy theorists are whackos.

You know, there is always some truth to conspiracies, especially in incidents like this.

[Peace Patriot]

63. A couple of new questions that need answering...

1. Is there a body? Who has seen it? Where is it? And how was he identified so quickly at a crash site that was generating a huge flaming ball?

2. Who were the people he had flown to meet at the MD airport?

--------

The question, why would someone who had been warned of sabotage pilot a small plane?, has been nagging at me. It's possible he didn't credit the threats enough. He HAD been vigilant, according to reports. He checked his plane carefully. If there was anything he didn't like, he didn't fly. He also checked the weather carefully. So, if you had had some threats, and were worried about, say, a car bomb, you would be vigilant, at first--drive a different car, take the bus, etc.--but after a while your mind might start to play games on you, and tell you that you're just being paranoid, your buds at the RNC wouldn't kill you, that's too fantastic. And then you would let up on your vigilance and get back in your car, and...kaboom.

That's one possibility--he was fighting paranoia, and let up his guard. But this other possibility--suggested upthread--that he WASN'T in the plane, intrigues me. It reminds me of that list of 9/11 hijackers that the FBI nearly instantly produced, with photos, from the flaming ashes of the WTC? (--quite a number of whom turned out to be alive and well, and living in Saudi Arabia or Yemen). What if those mystery people at the MD airport, that he took the flight to meet, 'disappeared' him, and...then what? Flew the plane by remote control? Put some patsy pilot in the sabotaged plane, to fly to his death, or sabotaged the plane remotely after it was in the air?

Seems we need a chain of evidence thing on Connell's alleged body. Autopsy records can easily be tampered with, if you are the Emperors of the World. Who has custody of the body? (--and do they have offshore bank accounts?) (--or some other motive, for instance, the NSA has taped their phone conversations or internet use, and is blackmailing them).

Who is the local police officer (highway patrol? can't recall just now), who so quickly identified Connell, and on what basis did he do that? Maybe he called the airport and got his name from the flight plan? Possible. If not, how did he know who it was? And if from some charred driver's license or something, that doesn't prove identity. IDs can be planted. Which brings me back to the autopsy. Was a DNA check done? Did Connell's wife, or someone else, provide a sample? Just because Connell went missing doesn't automatically mean that the body in the flaming ruins of the plane was him.

As to Question #2, if he had a meeting with people, there has to be some record of it--phone call, email. How was the meeting set up?

This is the most intriguing Bushwhack-related death since David Kelley (I'm 99% sure) was 'suicided' in the same week that Valerie Plame was outed (Plame outed 7/14/03, Kelly found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, 7/18/03; his office and computers were searched, then, on 7/22/03, Novak additionally outed the entire Brewster-Jennings network of WMD counter-proliferation agents and contacts around the world, both events closely connected to Bushwhack lies about the Iraq War). And, gee, guess what? Here's another mysterious death connected to yet more Bushwhack lies and dreadful crimes.

Maybe Connell is in Guantanamo Bay, or was taken to some torture dungeon in Eastern Europe--to be waterboarded to find out everyone he has talked to, and what he has said to them, since the Ohio lawsuit was filed. We have no way of knowing. You think they keep records of all their prisoners? Ha! And you think they are torturing them to "keep us safe"?

Bushwhacks think 'outside the box,' and so should we, in trying to follow their activities. It's a difficult thing to do, because the 'box' that Bushwhacks are on the outside of is all normal human ethics and common decency. We are hampered by these restraints in understanding Bushwhack events. We need to preserve our humanity, while following the trail, and the thinking patterns, of fiends, who have slaughtered a million people to get their oil, and have utterly destroyed our country, in every way you could name. So, what would they do with Michael Connell, once they had him in custody? Merely kill him, to silence him? Or mine him for every avenue of information by which they could be held to account for stealing the White House, twice? And then kill him? Meanwhile, we are all following a false trail--that he died in the plane crash.

To conduct a successful investigation, you have to ask the right questions. The question, Did the Bushwhacks sabotage Connell's plane, in order to kill and silence him?, may not be the right one. Nor: Why would someone who had been warned of sabotage fly a small airplane? Maybe he wasn't IN the airplane, at any time. Maybe the whole flight to and from MD was an orchestrated scenario. Maybe he was kidnapped at the beginning of the event.

The possibility that this was, in fact, a random accident, is still out there, and we should, of course, respect the evidence, if it can be determined to be reliable. But we need to turn our brains around, and STOP presuming Bushwhack innocence, in events like these. We need to start with their guilt, as the premise for asking questions. What would these conscienceless fiends do, to protect their trillions of stolen dollars, their evil power and their freedom? And how would they do it? How could they lure Connell onto a small plane, after their spying revealed that he was about to turn whistleblower, or, if he wouldn't be lured, how to fake it? Start there, outside the box, and work in. Was he on the plane? Is even that part of the scenario--that basic fact--untrue?

[KoKo]

64. Interesting..... What's a red flag to me...

Is that there has been no mention in major news at all about this incident. If it was a Dem IT expert who had been involved with the DNC and Clinton doing major computer work who died in a crash during the Lewinsky times the media would have been all over it saying he had been "offed." Limbaugh and the rest would pound it home that there were death threats and suspicious circumstances. That he was subpoenaed for deposition in a court case makes him interesting given his ties to "red flag Rove," and yet the only coverage is one station in Ohio. A small AP blurb on Saturday with few details was the only news I've seen that went national about him and then nothing else.

Why the silence surrounding him? Where are the reporters staked out at his house asking questions of his wife? Where are the reports about who he met and the weather conditions at the time. Connell is hardly an unknown person in the Political world...not some guy who just ran afoul of instrument failure, weather or whatever that can bring a small plane down.

Silence...except from the blogs..

[Peace Patriot]

65. The same silence that descended upon the land on Nov. 3, 2004.

Descended on all corpo/fascist media--TV, radio, print. Descended on virtually all Democratic leaders.* Descended on many liberal blogs (except this one). Like a black cloud hanging over the country; like an Iron Curtain. A conspiracy of silence, with the newly installed corporate Republican 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting software in 80% of the country just having 'tabulated' a vote count with a 3% deviation from the exit polls (Kerry won)--and almost 7% in Ohio--and having fed all the results to a AP laptop, thus to our TV screens, saying Bush won. Not a murmur out of our party leadership, which had colluded in the fast-tracking of 100% non-transparent, electronic voting systems all over the country. Not a peep out of our corrupted election officials* ($3.9 BILLION e-voting boondoggle from the Anthrax Congress in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution, Oct '02).

Silence. And the attempted silencing of those of us who were suspicious.

And now silence again, as the chief Rovian electronics expert goes down in flames in yet another suspicious small plane crash--just after being deposed in a lawsuit on the corrupted 2004 election.

Well, the corpo/fascist media altered their exit polls, late on 11/2/04, to force them to fit Diebold & brethren's 'TRADE SECRET' vote count. It's their crime, too. It's the crime, at least of complicity, of our own party leaders. It's Rove's crime. It's Bush's crime. It's Cheney's crime. Little wonder they are all into silencing, and some are into whacking, those who might expose them.

And little wonder that there is dead silence about it now, almost everywhere but the internet.

---------

*(There are a few rare exceptions among our Democratic leaders, to the awful silence that hid election fraud. One is CA Sec of State Kevin Shelley, who sued Diebold and demanded to see their source code, in May '04, six months before the 2004 election, and was swiftly driven from office on entirely bogus corruption charges, with the Democratic majority in the CA legislature complicit in that crime and some hiding under their desks as it was perpetrated. Also, John Edwards, the Dem VP candidate, opposed Kerry's concession on 11/3/04, and wanted to fight it, but was overruled. I can't think of any others. Can you? All others were complicit or fearful of Bushwhack powers of retaliation, including Diebolding them out of office, ruining their reputations in the corpo/fascist media, spying/blackmail, or their planes falling out of the sky for no good reason.)

[KoKo]

68. Yes..it's interesting what "some folks call

Conspiracy Theory"...and others call "TRUTH."

As many of us for years on this site have seen...the :tinfoilhat: somehow becomes "revealed information" and if we had a REAL CONGRESS and PRESS would be INVESTIGATED.

But..we should not give up...because like "Tom Paine" during the Revolution there are TRUTH TELLERS who are always villified...but, in the end..WE WIN...for a time...for a time....

:hi:

[Turbineguy]

66. Look at it this way....

If Rove is killing off election fraud operatives, it means they have to find new (and experienced) people to steal the 2012 election.

Carry on Mr. Rove!

[KoKo]

67. "Carry On Mr. Rove?" you obviously come over from the darkside..

No? :shrug: :eyes:

[Turbineguy]

69. Yeah.

You're right. Not exactly Christmas Spirit material.