Air Force's quiet quest for truth in Brown case

Editor's note: Jack Cashill is the author of the newly released, "Ron Brown's Body," already in its second printing.

"This is the nicest thing my government has ever done for me."

So I wrote to the U.S. Air Force in Ramstein, Germany, after its personnel volunteered to waive the four-figure fee for the printing and shipping of the 22-volume, 8,000-page report on the crash of Ron Brown's plane [USAF CT-43A, Boeing 737-200, Tail No. 31149]. Just a week later, a couple of hefty UPS guys came carrying the report up the steps to my office.

After witnessing the relentless obstruction by the National Transportation Safety Board and the CIA to Freedom Of Information Act requests in the TWA Flight 800 case, I had to interpret the Air Force's cooperation as willful. The Air Force has, after all, an abiding interest in the truth. An "inexplicable" plane crash needlessly ruined 16 Air Force careers and ended six worthy Air Force lives.

The Air Force was never allowed to pursue that truth. On April 4, 1996, just hours after the first Americans had arrived at the crash site – and long before anyone could have ruled out hostile fire or sabotage with any certainty – Air Force investigators were told to skip the "safety board" phase of the investigation and move directly to the "accident board" phase. In other words, they were tasked to discover what "accident" brought down the plane. This was the first time such a narrow directive was given for a crash on friendly soil.

When the Air Force report arrived at my office, I called in my primary aviation consultant, retired TWA Capt. Raymond Gentile, and gave him the voluminous technical data to review. He, in turn, enlisted another airline pilot to double-check his own analysis. Gentile has prepared a 7,000-word "Technical Report" on the likely cause of the crash that he would like to share with any Air Force personnel or aviation professionals who are interested in exploring the crash and refining his analysis. (Please e-mail me at [email protected], and I will send it along).

Meanwhile, I plowed through the 148 interviews and began integrating Gentile's analysis into the text of "Ron Brown's Body." At the end of the day, the Air Force report proves revealing more for what it omits than what it includes. Still, it does contain some intriguing revelations, to wit:

Brown went to Croatia to negotiate what would prove to be a sweetheart deal between Croatia and the Enron Corporation.
The Croatian government "insisted" on the Dubrovnik stop – and then, only an unprecedented 36 hours before the crash. At the time, it was apparent that the weather would be overcast for the next few days.
Contrary to the media storyline, the plane did not try to land during "the worst storm in a decade." It was not even raining at the time of the crash, and a gentle wind was blowing right down the runway.
Air Force investigators tried hard, but could not pinpoint the source of the four-hour misdirection of the NATO search and rescue operation.
The surviving flight attendant, Shelly Kelly, died of crash-related injuries – and not knife wounds as rumored – despite the best efforts of Croatian rescuers.
The data from two E-3 AEW aircraft (aka AWACS) – when combined with the ground-impact marks – indicate that the plane made a perfectly controlled landing on a 120 degree bearing just as it was supposed to, but it did so about two miles inland and right into a mountain.
No plane had ever deviated inland at this airport before. As the pilots well understood, the "missed approach" is to the right over the Adriatic.

For Gentile, these combined observations "unequivocally" indicate that "the aircraft was in fact tracking 120 degrees from the rogue NDB." In other words, conspirators likely shut down the true non-directional radio beacon and powered up a portable one east of the original site. The plane then tracked from this rogue beacon right into the hillside. If true, the four-hour delay would allow the conspirators ample time to finish the job they had contracted to do.

The most conspicuous evidence of that presumed job is the "apparent bullet hole" found in Ron Brown's head by the military pathologists at Dover. And this brings us to those even more revealing lines of inquiry, the ones conspicuously not pursued in the Air Force report:

The Air Force was aware of the head wound. Indeed, of the 33 death certificates filed with the report, only Brown's lists a head wound as cause of death, a fact that the military pathologists on site had to share. Still, no questions were raised about the head wound in the report.
No questions were raised about the life or death of Niko Jerkuic, the Croatian responsible for the navigation systems that were likely sabotaged. Jerkuic showed up with a bullet hole to the chest three days after the crash, only days before the Air Force could interrogate him.
Incredibly, no one aboard IFD 98 – the plane right behind Brown's – is asked about anything, not even the weather. The control tower communication reveals that the plane was put in a holding pattern, but the report makes no mention of the plane's fate beyond that, even though this plane, too, would likely have tracked off a rogue beacon.
There is no recorded interview with Zdenka Gast, the Croatian liaison to Enron who backed out of Brown's flight at the last minute. "We've been looking for her," an Air Force investigator had told American ambassador, Peter Galbraith. The Air Force obviously did not look too hard. I found her in five minutes of searching, but she would not talk to me.
There were no questions raised about potential sabotage, about terrorist missile threats, or about missile batteries in nearby Bosnia, and this just six months after the Dayton accords.

The Air Force did not ask these obvious questions because they were not allowed to. We welcome inquiries from anyone inside the Air Force, or out, who can help us solidify the evidence and the answers. And we are happy to share our findings with anyone in the major media willing to pursue this story – one of the great, untold stories of our time.

Editor's note: The sensational new edition of WND's monthly Whistleblower magazine,"THE PARTY OF TREASON," rips the veneer of civility and compassion off the Democratic Party and reveals how the party of Truman and Kennedy has been transformed into "the enemy within."

Order your copy of "Ron Brown's Body" today.

Part 2: How 'minority capitalism' undid Ron Brown

Part 3: Competing against the Clintons for cash

Part 4: Clinton's new "bagman"

Part 5: Second 'black president' likely to build on legacy of first

Part 6: Some dare call it treason

Part 7: Wang Jun's excellent White House adventure

Part 8: Sun peeked through 'worst storm in a decade'

Part 9: The bullet hole that should have shaken Washington

Part 10: How Monica buried Ron Brown and saved the Clinton presidency

Part 11: Was Ron Brown murdered, and, if so, how and by whom?