The death of US Senator Paul Wellstone: accident or murder?
By the Editorial Board
29 October 2002
There is a serious question about the sudden death of Democratic
Senator Paul Wellstone that has no doubt occurred to many people:
was Wellstone the victim of a political assassination?
It is possible that there will emerge a credible explanation of the
October 25 plane crash that killed Wellstone, his wife Sheila, daughter
Marcia, and five others near Eveleth, Minnesota. Initial reports,
however, are disturbing. None of the typical causes of a small plane
accident[breve]engine failure, icing, pilot error[breve]appear to be involved.
The plane, a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air A100, was apparently in
good condition when it hit the ground and exploded into flames about
two miles from the Eveleth-Virginia airport in the Minnesota iron range.
The Beechcraft model has an excellent safety record, with only two
fatal crashes[breve]both in December 1997[breve]in the past six years. Debris
recovered from the crash site includes both the plane[not equal]s engines, which
suffered blade damage, suggesting that the engines were running
when the plane crashed.
While weather conditions were less than ideal, with some ice and
freezing rain, two smaller Beech Queen Air planes had landed at
Eveleth without incident two hours before the crash, when
temperatures were colder. Wellstone[not equal]s plane was reportedly equipped
with two separate de-icing mechanisms.
Visibility was limited but well above the minimum required[breve]between
two and two and a half miles. Although the approach to the airport was
being made using instruments, the airport would have been in clear
view of the pilot once he descended below the lowest cloud layer at
about 700 feet.
The plane[not equal]s two pilots were both experienced, with the senior man,
Capt. Richard Conry, 55, having airline transport pilot certification, the
top industry qualification. Co-pilot Michael Guess, 30, was a certified
commercial pilot. Wellstone was by all accounts a cautious flier, and
there is no suggestion that the decision to fly that day was a reckless
one.
The acting chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board,
Carol Carmody, said there was a slight irregularity in the Eveleth
airport[not equal]s radio beacon, but it was not yet possible to say whether this
contributed to the accident.
The plane[not equal]s altimeter and [greater equal]possibly one other gauge[approx equal] have been
recovered and sent to the NTSB lab in Washington for analysis,
Carmody said. The plane was not required to have a cockpit voice
recorder and was not equipped with one.
According to air traffic control records, the flight had proceeded without
incident until its last moments. Wellstone[not equal]s plane took off at 9:37 a.m.
from Minneapolis-St. Paul, received permission to climb to 13,000 feet
at 9:48 a.m., and received clearance to descend towards Eveleth at
10:01 a.m., at which time the pilot was told there was icing at the
9,000-11,000 foot level. The plane began its descent at 10:10 a.m.,
passed through the icing altitude without apparent difficulty, and at
10:18 a.m. was cleared for approach to the airport. A minute later, at
3,500 feet, the plane began to drift away from the runway. It was last
sighted at 10:21 a.m., flying at 1,800 feet.
Carmody said that the impact area was 300 feet by 190 feet, with
evidence of [greater equal]extreme post-crash fire.[approx equal] The plane apparently was
headed south, away from the Eveleth runway, when it hit the ground.
[greater equal]The angle was steeper than would be expected in a normal stabilized
standardized approach,[approx equal] she said. Some press reports cited eyewitness
accounts of a near-vertical plunge.
Under different political circumstances it might be possible to dismiss
the Eveleth crash as a tragic accident whose causes, even if they
cannot be precisely determined, lie in the sphere of aircraft engineering
and weather phenomena. But the death of Paul Wellstone takes place
under conditions in which far too many strange things are happening in
America.
Wellstone[not equal]s death comes almost two years to the day after a similar
plane crash killed another Democratic Senate hopeful locked in a tight
election contest, Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, on October 16,
2000. The American media duly noted the [greater equal]eerie coincidence,[approx equal] as
though it was a statistical oddity, rather than suggesting a pattern.
One might say, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, that to lose one senator is a
misfortune, but to lose two senators, the same way, is positively
suspicious.
Last year two leading Senate Democrats, Majority Leader Tom
Daschle and Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, were
targeted for assassination with letters laced with anthrax. The federal
Justice Department[breve]headed by John Ashcroft, who lost to the
deceased Mel Carnahan in the Missouri contest[breve]has failed to
apprehend the anthrax mailer.
Wellstone was in a hotly contested reelection campaign, but polls
showed he was beginning to pull ahead of Republican nominee Norm
Coleman, the former mayor of St. Paul, in the wake of the vote in the
Senate to authorize President Bush to wage war against Iraq. The
liberal Democrat was a well-publicized opponent of the war resolution,
the only Senator in a tight race to vote against it.
More broadly, with the Senate controlled by the Democrats by a margin
of 50-49, the loss of even a single seat could shift control to the
Republicans. The immediate effect of Wellstone[not equal]s death is to deprive
the Democrats of a majority in the lame-duck session scheduled for
late November.
Without exaggerating Wellstone[not equal]s personal significance[breve]he was a
conventional bourgeois politician and no threat to the profit
system[breve]there are enormous financial stakes involved in control of the
Senate. Republican control of the Senate would make it possible to
push through new tax cuts for the wealthy and other perks for corporate
America worth billions of dollars[breve]more than enough of an incentive to
commit murder.
The neo-fascist elements within and around the Republican Party have
already demonstrated their contempt for democracy, first in the
protracted campaign of political destabilization against the Clinton
administration, then with the theft of the 2000 presidential election.
They are now preparing to slaughter tens of thousands of Iraqis in
order to grab control of the second largest oil reserves in the world. To
imagine that they would suffer moral qualms over a conveniently timed
plane crash would be naïve in the extreme.
There is another curious and suggestive factor. Virtually every day the
Bush administration issues warnings of terrorist attacks on trains,
nuclear reactors, airports or government buildings, to keep the
American people off balance and stampede the public into supporting
the impending war against Iraq. Government officials are prepared to
attribute virtually any act of violence[breve]such as the Washington sniper
shootings[breve]to Al Qaeda. Yet there has been no suggestion that the
destruction of Wellstone[not equal]s plane was the result of terrorism. Perhaps in
this case they prefer not to inquire too closely into the causes.
In the current climate of war, repression and right-wing provocation, it
is perfectly reasonable to ask whether Wellstone was the victim of a
political killing. No investigation deserving of the name can exclude
sabotage as a possible cause of the plane crash. And yet, given the
cowardice of the Democratic Party and the advanced putrefaction of
American democracy, the official investigation will in all probability
conclude that Wellstone[not equal]s death was the result of an unfortunate but
unexplainable mechanical malfunction.
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