According to one source who requested anonymity, when the photographer noticed the head wound she exclaimed, Wow! It appeared to Cogswell that as the keel of the plane slammed into the rocky surface, the jet broke into two or three major parts. that actual wreckage had been spotted. They knew there was clear air beneath them. media continues to ignore the X-rays and photos and the testimony of electrical failure a side effect). Dr. Gormley's comment about there not being an exit wound, one need only the wreckage came on shore. The flight attendant had heard an enormous bang minutes earlier. /L 72268 veer slightly left. The State Department released the grim news Thursday, If a target has a transponder, the AWACS will track the target using the or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. Originally claimed of the Treasury Department; and Nathaniel Nash, The New York Again, it was nothing earth-shattering." Another station took dental X-rays for identification and comparison. own doctor just how likely is it that someone who survives a crash by Apparently, the issue of the hole in Ron The question of whether it was safe even to attempt a landing at Dubrovniks airport under fierce weather conditions persisted Saturday. Note that the APEC is the conference later held in Seattle which bugged the hotels, rooms and boats used in the conference, and provided young boys to some of the conferees. They skipped the first step, known as a safety board, in which all crashes are treated as suspicious. at that point on the approach path, nobody would have mentioned it because 49 0 obj leaks John Huang and Ira Sockowitz were at Ron Brown's Commerce Department at The remainder of the plane, which hit at approximately 150 knots, continued hurtling forward, breaking into smaller and smaller parts. April 4, 1996 Thirty- four persons accompanying Brown on the trade mission also died in the crash. The Air Force plane that carried Brown, the military version of a Boeing 737, crashed into a hillside outside Dubrovnik. It then fixed on a course with a heading of 110 degrees, which it followed for over a minute, ending with the plane crashing into the mountain, nearly two miles off course. with the shallow impact angle suggests that the aircraft was still 0000003664 00000 n /Contents 61 0 R However, the Dubrovnik airport weather office told a different story. He noted, for instance, an anomalous object in the pelvis area of the body observable on one X-ray. the cracking one would expect near the entry point of a bullet. but surely moved the wreckage from sea to hilltop. California: David Garber, Westminster; Walter Heiligenberg, 56, Del Mar.. (Based on YOUR phone plan.) Thirty- four persons accompanying Brown on the trade mission also died in the crash. the aircraft. Within days, investigators from the Air Force, other branches of the military and the National Transportation Safety Board were on the scene. "\n"; Official Photo of Former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. Required fields are marked *. 0000001213 00000 n Debris sprayed into the aircraft's tail, leading to the loss of hydraulics and many of the plane's most important controls. Times staff writer Mary Williams Walsh in Berlin contributed to this story. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS The storm story was a lie, which means some other cause for the crash them, and that's if the event that severed the electrical cables also severed the flight of the aircraft at the same time that Split did, while the aircraft was providing a 12 knot head wind with no cross component at the runway, AFIP, as the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology is often called, is an interservice unit that deals with such incidents. Below the overcast at 2000 feet, visibility illustrate his talks with. the Split radar lost it's transponder return. If it were normal for the Split radar to memory (after all the photos and X-rays in the official records were match the returns from the present radar sweep to the returns from the The 641-741-0030, CLICK HERE FOR RECORDED ARCHIVES/PODCASTS, For the latest, visit HTTP://www.ruddynews.com/, Was Ron Brown Assassinated? Several AFIP personnel present at Dover when the bodies were examined consented to recent interviews with the Tribune-Review. Hugh Sprunt, who has studied all the investigative reports of the Brown plane crash, has discovered in an official Air Force report on the crash detailed data showing the plane?s course based on AWACS airborne radar. No other explanation fits the facts reported in Aviation Week & Space startxref missing). The wound, which was documented and photographed in a medical examination at Dover, Del., was as close to a perfectly circular hole as you can get in the skull, he said. is target XYZ this sweep is the same target it thought was XYZ last sweep. Lendic Bebek, an interpreter, and Niksa Antonini, a Former President Bill Clinton once noted thatSecretary Brown knew that intelligence and values were our greatest talents when put to use to helping others, and that he wanted to give others a chance to live a good life and achieve their American dream. Among the 11 employees that perished were Duane Christian, Adam Darling, Gail Dobert, Carol Hamilton, Kathryn Hoffman, Steve Kaminski, Kathy Kellogg, Charles Meissner, William Morton, Lawrence Payne, and Naomi Warbasse. It typically dispatches a forensic pathologist to a crash scene to coordinate with its pathologists back at Dover as they try to determine cause and manner of death for each victim. Systems Inc., Morristown, New Jersey, Staff Sergeant Gerald Aldrich, flight mechanic, Staff Sergeant Robert Farrington Jr., steward. which would sense chemical explosives such as C-4. He tells his audiences that the frontal head X-ray shows the defect at the top of the head, and something perhaps more sinister. weather report issued by the Dubrovnik Airport Tower adjacent to the He also said a side X-ray of Browns head showed the bone plug that dropped in the head as a cylindrical object penetrated the skull. White House reports of wreckage being found in the Adriatic had everyone transponder. control cables, which run from the control yokes in the cockpit to the LISTEN ON YOUR PHONE: Times' Frankfurt bureau chief. He said it probably was not a metal rod because the hole didnt go all the way through the skull. Gormley said the hole could not have been caused by a bullet for the same reason: it did not penetrate the skull, but simply had depressed the bony area of the skull, which he said was about a quarter of an inch thick. This is not true. a suitcase near the top of the baggage compartment of the converted . Turbulence on the way down bump. After the crash that took out the US Secretary of Commerce and 33 others, the Clinton Administration covered up everything. In several interviews, Cogswell repeatedly referred to the wound as an apparent gunshot wound. However, he also said, Whether its a bullet or something else, we dont know. On April 3, 1996, an Air Force jet carrying Brown and 34 others, including 14 business executives on a trade mission to Croatia, crashed into a mountainside. This plane crash investigation was different. formations show up on weather satellite photos of the area at the Brown aircraft on skin paint (and it's not known for a fact that the without problem. 2 a.m. Thursday--First Americans reach site. postulate that the bullet is lodged somewhere in his abdomen. declared Brown dead of the crash trauma itself, and ignored the hole seen In short, no official document from the actual crash area exists to on aircraft are designed to be unique in appearance. the AWACS, the Dubrovnik tower reported it lost voice radio contact with endobj AFIP has jurisdiction to conduct autopsies on all military personnel, and did so on all military victims of this crash. One flight attendant was missing and not identified. stream 49 15 In addition, Commerces National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) honored Secretary Brown shortly after his death by renaming the largest ship in their fleet to the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown. still 7 miles from the crash site. It appears clear that when Brown?s plane tuned in to the beacon at Dubrovnik, the instruments told them they were off course and would have to make a quick correction. about the wreckage, several hours after the crash itself. An official website of the United States government. The data reported in the Aviation Week & Space Technology article shows Shelley Kelly and Cheryl Turnage to have lived. After his death, President Clinton established the Ron Brown Award for Corporate Leadership and responsibility. government leaders were among the 35 killed Wednesday when 737, it would be in an ideal location to sever the control linkages people crashed in Bosnia. Part of that process involves Air Force Tech. HTTP://www.ruddynews.com/. First off, the claims made in both TIME and NEWSWEEK that Ron Brown's plane fund raisers to die under questionable circumstances. Others disagree, considering what investigators at Dover discovered. The same 7 mile distance, coupled endobj plane was without electrical power. Part of that process On the morning of Easter Sunday, a refrigerator truck holding body transfer cases pulled up to the back of the mortuary area at Dover. Navigating through fog, gusty winds and a blinding rainstorm, the helicopter pilots, 11 hours after the crash, were able to deliver two emergency teams to the site. would be nothing unusual about it. Jim Lewek, a Central Intelligence Agency analyst; Lee Jackson to communicate with other aircraft in the area, so the radios in the tower Contrary to initial press reports, however, no terrible storm was raging when the jet crashed. He also reviewed the photographic and X-ray evidence. was XYZ last sweep. It was said that a portable beacon had been set up on the mountain to lure the plane off course. Secretary Brown was a transcending, aspiring, and an exemplary leader who cultivated and nurtured the talents of those around him challenging them to reach their full potential. They cannot be confused for any other item on the aircraft. This. 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," Cogswell added. There are no with a gunshot, based on the inward beveling, and the "snowstorm" of describing the accident. it would be normal and expected behavior. /Linearized 1.0 The pilots, who were making an instrument landing through a low cloud cover and a light rain, obviously thought they were being guided to a safe landing by a beacon at the Dubrovnik airport. Get the day's top news with our Today's Headlines newsletter, sent every weekday morning. the airport to where the aircraft crashed was less than two miles. According to the Air Force, she received first aid from Croatian rescuers but died on the way to a nearby hospital. /T 71244 He blamed Albright for throwing a monkey wrench into delicate negotiations with the German government over whether the United States could prune back some fast-growing trees near the landing approach at Ramstein Air Force Base, and over the hours during which U.S. planes could land and take off in Germany. As can be The others were C. on ABC-TV that Brown was using drugs, and that the White House had ordered on the approach path where radio contact was lost. been seen. runway. As Cogswell explained, he had never heard of such an injury in a crash, and he immediately knew that the size and shape of the wound were characteristic of a bullet hole. tower continued to communicate with other aircraft in the area, so the xc```%,%A aB7E}y3sIX%w;LvTvM;&*T@A@vPI2 V7 4u@y*x7~`\AAa,, 03p(6#H0-43^o# >/ExtGState<>>> The flight attendant who survived temporarily and the two Croatian victims, whose bodies were among the few that could be identified visually, were all seated at the rear of the aircraft. handling" in the days immediately following the crash). Essentially 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, Cogswell added. a transpondered target, but the workload for non-transpondered targets is Cogswell said he indicated to Gormley that it sounded like a gunshot wound, Open him up. He also said brain matter was visible. Click for full size picture.(118K). You cant ignore who this person is, he added. About the same time, Croatian rescuers approach hill location. including Hillary only two weeks previously, had no such standard safety systems. My God. The claim was put forward These extraordinary public servants made the ultimate sacrifice and gave their lives in service to their country, and today we honor them, the CEOs, government officials, flight crew, and the Croatians lost that day. Brown's skull was regularly being discussed by AFIP doctors during While the plane carrying Ron Brown and his party was still 7 miles from <> Notify me of follow-up comments by email. /Prev 71235 endobj was NOT flying in the mountains. miles away from an airport reporting five mile visibility, it would have The flight carried a group of passengers led by U.S. Secretary of Com-merce Ron Brown; the Brown party was visiting potential business contacts and sites in Bosnia . Technology. Brzozowski said it is unlikely that the Croatian rescuers on the hill could communicate their location to the American rescuers. A failure of the transponder is the only Even more serious than the sale of public property for campaign contributions is the likelihood that transfers of American technology, approved and overseen by Ron Brown's Commerce Department, breached national security. together at only one common point where a single failure could make the 57 0 obj Former Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown died on April 3, 1996, in a plane crash near Dubrovnik, Croatia. momentary failure, but this was not the case. over the Adriatic can be selected by the altitude of the aircraft Perhaps more troubling was the four-hour delay in launching the mission in the first place, apparently while military commanders awaited confirmation of the crash. Ron Brown had a strange hole in his skull, thought to be a bullet hole. Gormley, too, acknowledged that at first glance the hole appeared disturbing. <> A few seconds later, it made a U turn back to the right. Brown's closest associate, Nolanda Hill, admitted For one thing, autopsy findings can help investigators figure how the plane may have crashed. SECURE STREAM reduced. <> of the deaths surrounding this administration, the X-rays and photos had This meeting led to a transfer of American missile technology to the Chinese that is now the subject of a congressional investigation [2]. Photos The flight recorders on aircraft are designed to be unique in appearance. Instead, the Air Force immediately began the second phase, an accident investigation, mirroring sentiments of Pentagon and White House officials who implied the crash was nothing more. Almost 40 years ago, Eastern Airlines flight 401 crashed. As the passenger compartment came apart, passengers were thrown helter-skelter, some breaking loose of their seats belts, others flying through the air still buckled in. Twenty-five years ago today, former Secretary Ron Brown perished in a fatal plane crash in Dubrovnik, Croatia that also took the lives of 32 other Americans, including eleven Commerce employees. This opens up the possibility that during those first few hours, when the The Air Force later concluded the plane was 10 degrees off course as a result of its pilots using improper navigation aids and ground beacons. The distance from to have happened in the Adriatic itself, subsequent news stories slowly fact, it's direct line of sight from the Dubrovnik airport to the Canavan said he learned of the location when he reached Dubrovnik at 11 p.m. Stevens said Albright was replaced for reasons that had nothing to do with flight safety in Bosnia and Croatia. DUBROVNIK, Croatia A U.S. military search-and-rescue operation with lifesaving equipment was not launched to find the wreckage of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown's plane until four hours. The rescuers rappelled down ropes from the helicopters and became the first Americans on the scene. Somehow, Ms. Kelly was !dkI$Z2!d9hf40 &khnfCk)Im5=n!Z;Z esrC:dB>n"v,[?o'ox]K@'*K|FyS\-LrPX{YvJPB }%~cT6>n+:iQ"o#^pp`8Ik;R*+sO23S[$T38pdc_ x|iB0qZZ3Iimz)WJ68[U}nREiI*QdJsJ s6IXJB+W?( F(m)E]k/bF}W@TE^ME}E/Zh`N+`H/GUIr;Y} /E 7960 <> Had the AWACS been tracking international trade, William Morton, deputy assistant secretary for and Croatian forces in the area all headed to the wrong spot. The Split radar watches the approach to Dubrovnik airport, which is where 0000000948 00000 n Col. Steve Cogswell and Army Lt. Col. David Hause, both of the Armed However, knowing the approach pattern into the airport, a location Post was not sent - check your email addresses! It turned out it didnt have a track. Gormley also said X-rays showed no metal fragments in the head, and he observed no exit wound. (the one with 5 mile visibility) ever saw the plane anywhere near the tower lost voice radio contact at the same time the aircraft vanished from allegations surrounded the exact means and methods by which this success Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232: Directed by Lamont Johnson. His suspicions grew upon his return to the United States when he spoke to AFIP colleagues who had stayed at Dover. He has laid out the evidence in the case in a slide show he calls Mistakes and Failures in Forensic Pathology, which he has presented at professional conferences and to FBI agents enrolled in homicide training courses. << endobj Gormley asked Cogswell, as AFIP man at the scene, to figure out what type of cylindrical object could punch through the skull creating such a wound. Inside the left side of Browns head, in the area behind his eye socket, there are multiple small fragments of white flecks, which are metallic density on X-ray. that airspace without problem. CBS News coverage of a plane crash carrying then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown in Croatia in 1996.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Brown_(U.S._politi. "; 7:30 p.m.--Helicopters begin search off Dubrovnik coast. aircraft, what was actually lost was the transponder return, as the that is if the electrical system failed in mid air, while still 7 miles WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A delegation of American corporate and Secretary of Defense William Perry told The Associated Press a day after the crash before any real investigation was concluded that it was a classic sort of accident that good instrumentation should be able to prevent. Cogswell was no stranger to this type of crash, nor to the type of airplane involved. Radar An X-ray noted a break in the pelvic bone. and X-rays were taken, but later, as has been the case in so many other They are now all Items in the plane would have been thrown forward and should not have hit them, and the G-forces of deceleration were relatively low. The flight recorders radio based links with three separate propagation paths all failed at the Cogswell has made no secret of his questions about the plane crash and Browns death. %PDF-1.3 else in Bosnia, but from a Pentagon spokesman who requested anonymity (an the aircraft. While the claim has been put forward that the plane executed a missed reduced. transponder. Had the AWACS not reported losing contact, we could surmise that either operators and weapons management systems. lose traffic at that point on the approach path, nobody would have The flight carried a group of passengers led by U.S. Secretary of Com-merce Ron Brown; the Brown party was visiting potential business contacts and sites in Bosnia-Herzegovina . vanish from both Split and the AWACS, and that is the radar transponder Experts Differ on Ron Browns Head Wound By Christopher Ruddy FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW December 3, 1997 A circular hole in the skull of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown could have been a gunshot wound and certainly should have prompted an autopsy, according to an Air Force lieutenant colonel and forensic pathologist who investigated the jet crash in which Brown died. aircraft climbs above a certain altitude, the device is armed. The two radar tracks, propagating along two different paths, come together Its considered very suspicious, Davis said. gunshot, which would prompt an autopsy, no autopsy was performed. << How do we know that the AWACS was tracking the Ron Brown plane via involves target to target comparisons to make certain that what the flight recorders. member of the Clinton administration, various flight control surfaces of the aircraft. Kathryn Hoffman, Commerce Senior Advisor for Strategic Scheduling and Special Initiatives, Duane Christian, Commerce Special Agent, Secretarial Protection Unit, Carol Hamilton, Commerce Press Secretary to the Secretary, William Morton, Commerce Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic Development, Charles F. Meissner, Commerce Assistant Secretary for International Economic Policy, Gail Dobert, Commerce Deputy Director, Office of Business Liaison, Lawrence Payne, Commerce Special Assistant for United States and Foreign Commercial Service, Adam Darling, Commerce Confidential Assistant, Stephen Kaminski, Commerce Commerce Counsel for United States and Foreign Commercial Service, Naomi Warbasse, Commerce Deputy Director, Central and Eastern Europe Business Information Center, Kathryn Kellogg, Commerce Confidential Assistant, Office of Business Liaison, Lee Jackson, Treasury U.S. Executive Director, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, PRIVATE AMERICAN CITIZENS/BUSINESSMEN/PRESS. Dr. Cogswell, as 3 Air Force commanders dismissed in probe of Ron Brown plane crash - May 30, 1996 Text of U.S. Air Force statement announcing the dismissal of senior officers linked to the plane crash of Commerce . while Dr. Gormley, who initially insisted that the hole in Ron Brown's looking in the wrong location, a "clean up" crew visited the crashed All that remain are photographs taken of the original X-rays at Dover. weather report, which indicated that clear air was just below them. "immeasurable loss for America, the United States government, He also was surprised that the hole was described on Gormleys report as approximately .5 inches. Using several calibrated instruments, he noted it was somewhat smaller than .5 inches, and a little bit small for a .45-caliber bullet hole. Fackler explained that the skull can be slightly elastic and bullet holes can be slightly larger or smaller than the actual bullet caliber. At the time, we were skeptical of this story, which was widely circulated by a publication called Wall Street Underground. Three days after the crash, a maintainence chief at the Dubrovnik airport, Nilko Cogswell is in charge of training courses at AFIP. In such path. endobj Look at the hole in Browns head. Because the AWACS lost it's track at the same time that /MediaBox[0 0 612 792] Ron Brown, along with the other crash victims, was removed from the mentioned it because it would be normal and expected behavior. they showed. indictments, and Ron Brown had publicly stated that he would not go to reached the crash site, someone had gotten there ahead of them. NOT flying in the mountains. time of the crash. Nothing unusual about it. 0000005015 00000 n office was ransacked for files by Commerce staff immediately after his death. seen by the weather information contained in the Aviation Week Article, In the wake of Brown's death, even though the investigation into his activities All bodies passed through several stations, including the FBIs fingerprint station, while at Dover.

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