Apollonian
Guest Columnist
Was Ron Brown, Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce, Murdered by the Clintons to Save Their Presidency?
By Jeremy Kuzmarov- January 8, 2022
Link: https://covertactionmagazine.com/20...red-by-the-clintons-to-save-their-presidency/
[This article is part of CAM’s series on political assassinations. It is also part of a week of articles on Bill and Hillary Clinton—two career criminals and super-predators to use a term Hillary famously used to promote harsh law and order policies fueling America’s mass incarceration boom.—Editors]
On April 3, 1996, Ron Brown, then-Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration, was killed along with 34 others, all but two of them Americans, when their Air Force CT-43A plane crashed into a mountainside near Dubrovnik, Croatia.
An Air Force inquiry blamed the crash on pilot error, failure of the Air Force command responsible for overseeing the flight, and a poorly designed landing approach.[1]
Brown’s body was found 40 yards from the plane—further than any of the other victims—with a hole in his head that could only have come from a gunshot wound.[2]
A report in Zagreb listed “blunt force injuries to the head” as the cause of Brown’s death.”[3]
A Navy photographer, Kathleen Janoski, noted three days after the crash that the circular hole at the top of Brown’s head was 0.45 inches in diameter and “looked like a bullet hole.”
This finding was confirmed by Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell after Brown’s body underwent a medical exam at the Dover Air Force Base.
[IMG alt="Graphical user interface, website
Description automatically generated"]https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagaz...ion-aut.gif?resize=350,415&ssl=1[/IMG][Source: whatreallyhappened.com][IMG alt="A close-up of a brain
Description automatically generated with medium confidence"]https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagaz...cally-g.gif?resize=360,492&ssl=1[/IMG][Source: whatreallyhappened.com]
Cogswell determined that the original x-rays of Brown’s head showed possible metal fragments in the brain, consistent with a high-velocity gunshot wound. Stating that the whole thing “stinks,” he recommended that Brown be opened up, and that an autopsy be performed—which never happened.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, a legendary forensic pathologist told journalist Christopher Ruddy that there was more than enough evidence to suggest “possible homicide in Ron Brown’s death; an autopsy should have been performed.”[4]
The reason it was not, was because of pressure from the Clinton White House.
Who Was Ron Brown?
Characterized by The New York Times as a “skilled political insider and deal-maker” who helped “unify the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton,” Brown’s career reflected in many ways the cooptation of the civil rights movement by the ruling political establishment.A graduate of Middlebury College from Harlem who served with the U.S. Army in South Korea and West Germany, Brown worked as a welfare caseworker for the National Urban League and counsel for Senator Ted Kennedy before becoming the first Black partner in the law firm of Patton, Boggs & Blow.
The latter was one of the most skilled lobbying firms in Washington, and Brown’s most famous client there was Haitian dictator Francois “Baby Doc” Duvalier.[5]
[IMG alt="A person shaking another person's hand
Description automatically generated"]https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagaz...scriptio.jpeg?resize=250,236&ssl=1[/IMG]Brown when he was an attorney at Patton, Boggs & Blow. [Source: bostonmandelascandal.com]
In 1989, Brown was elected as the first African-American head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which subsequently faced allegations of procuring illegal campaign contributions for Bill Clinton from dubious sources.
Before he left for Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brown was up to his neck in numerous scandals; he was under investigation by the Justice Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, the FBI, the Energy Department, the Senate Judiciary Committee—and even by his own Commerce Department’s Inspector General.
Brown had used his office as Commerce Secretary to “break open markets,” as The New York Times put it, while ensuring that corporate America would help drive U.S. foreign policy. He lobbied hard for the passage of free-trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he said would benefit U.S. workers.[6]
Reflecting the corrupt ethos of America’s second Gilded Age, Brown sold seats on his plane for trade missions that he led to corporations which made large contributions to the DNC.
Brown was a key figure in the growing U.S. corporate penetration of both Russia and China and lobbied for granting China most favored nation status—irrespective of its human rights record.[7]
President Clinton had antagonized China by expanding arms sales to Taiwan through opened trade and loosened controls on weapons exports. He allowed for the sale of advanced U.S. military technology by Lockheed Martin, Hughes Aircraft and Loral Space & Communications, whose CEO, Bernard Schwartz, was a major donor to the Democratic Party.[8]
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton’s top donor was Mochtar Riady, an Indonesian financier and arms merchant connected to Chinese intelligence.
Clinton had met Riady through fellow Arkansan Jackson Stephens, owner of the largest investment firm outside of Wall Street who helped bring the infamous Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI)—which laundered funds for the CIA—into the U.S.
When Webster Hubbell, an old Clinton ally from Arkansas and the Associate Attorney General, was indicted on fraud charges, Clinton had Riady pay him a bribe of $800,000 so he would not sing to the Feds.
In return, Clinton appointed John Huang, a Riady agent, as Assistant Secretary of Commerce—a position that gave him clearance to attend CIA briefings.
Huang—a Democratic Party fundraiser who later pled guilty to arranging illegal campaign donations—was accused of committing espionage and passing classified information on U.S.-China technology transfers to Riady, who headed a business conglomerate known as the Lippo Group.
According to author Victor Thorn, Ron Brown was killed because he refused to be the fall guy for the Clintons’ ethical and legal violations and cronyism, which blatantly compromised U.S. national security.
Among other things, Brown had insider knowledge about illicit bribes made by the Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Company (Arkla)—headed by Thomas “Mack” McLarty, DNC treasurer in 1992 and Clinton’s Chief of Staff—to the Oklahoma energy regulation commissioner to help cover up a scam by which Oklahoma residents were being overcharged.
Brown’s son Michael was appointed to the board of a natural gas company, Dynamic Energy Resources, whose owners, Gene and Nora Lum, were prosecuted for making illegal donations to the Clinton campaign.[9]
- [IMG alt="A close up of a person
Description automatically generated with low confidence"]https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagaz...omatically.gif?resize=132,187&ssl=1[/IMG]Nora Lum [Source: archives.starbulletin.com]
Daniel Pearson was picked as the Independent Counsel to investigate Brown’s influence peddling.
Two weeks before Brown died, he had a stormy meeting with Clinton in which Brown demanded that Clinton get him off the hook—as he felt that his son Michael was going to go to jail. Brown threatened the Clintons and their associates with exposure as leverage for his son’s freedom.
[IMG alt="A person in a suit
Description automatically generated with medium confidence"]https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagaz...y-gene.jpeg?resize=274,320&ssl=1[/IMG]Michael Brown [Source: cnn.com]
Brown allegedly told Clinton, “unless you get the independent counsel off my back, I may have to turn over evidence [related to Huang’s appointment, Mochtar Riady and China].”
Hillary Clinton would never allow such a move.
Brown consequently was sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia unexpectedly on a fundraising trip—whose purpose was to help U.S. companies such as Boeing get an edge on competition for up to $5 billion in military procurement contracts.[10]
Brown’s mistress, Nolanda Hill, smelled a rat and begged Brown not to go—but to no avail.
Enron executives were tipped off and took their own plane. However, Charles F. Meissner, Assistant Secretary for International Economic Policy and John Huang’s immediate supervisor at Commerce, was on-board and died in the plane crash.[11]
For the Clintons, this killed two birds with one stone.
Spoofing of Plane
Brown’s plane had made 12,000 landings and had recently ferried Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary William J. Perry around Croatia.Aircraft safety authority Al Diehl presents a plausible scenario in which Brown’s plane crashed as a result of a process known as spoofing—in which a spurious navigational aid is used to trick the pilot to change course.
This practice was used by the British during World War II and the United States in Vietnam. When it is adopted, the pilots are deceived into not being able to hone-in on the electronic beacon transmitting a signal to their aircraft.[12]
A key figure in the spoofing scenario was Croatian air traffic controller Niko Jerkovic who did not report for work on the morning of April 3rd. This was because he had been given an assignment by two officers in the Croatian intelligence services to help down Brown’s plane for which he was offered a substantial amount of money.[13]
Under the assignment, Jerkovic drove to an isolated spot outside of Dubrovnik, east of the Kolocep Island. There he set the frequency of a portable radio at 318 kilohertz to match the Kolocep Island beacon and then encoded the KLP Morse code identifier, which was powered up after the earlier scheduled flights landed.
When word came from Dubrovnik that Brown’s plane had checked in at 2:46 p.m. local time and other planes landed, Jerkovic shot down the normal nondirectional radio beacon (NDB) and activated the rogue NDB.
The automatic direction finder in the plane now pointed to Jerkovic’s beacon near Dubrovnik.
At this distance, the needle shift was negligible, meaning that the two pilots of Brown’s plane—Ashley Davis and Tim Schafer—scarcely noticed.
Davis then proceeded to fly toward Kolocep and the St. John’s Peak (Sveti Ivan), instead of to the Dubrovnik Airport runway, because the rogue transmitter had altered their course.
Before they knew it—Bam!—the plane smashed into the mountainside 1.6 miles north of the runway.
When word of the crash came over Jerkovic’s radio, he shut down the temporary transmitter and reactivated the Kolocep Island beacon.[14]
[IMG alt="A picture containing text
Description automatically generated"]https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagaz...omatical.jpeg?resize=481,368&ssl=1[/IMG]Image of crashed plane in the St. John’s Peak. [Source: planecrashinfo.com]