Was McConnel's Plane Crash and Accident

....or did Cheney's hit squads have something to do with it?

Shannon Connell of Madison says her brother Michael rarely talked about work. She knew he ran an Ohio company called New Media Communications that set up websites for Republicans including former President George H.W. Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But it wasn't until after he died last December, when the small plane he was piloting crashed, that she learned via the Internet of his tie to a voter fraud case and to allegations that presidential adviser Karl Rove had made threats against him.

"At first, it was really hard for me to believe Mike was dead because somebody wanted him dead," says Shannon, a buyer for a local children's resale shop. "But as time goes on, it's hard for me not to believe there was something deliberate about it."

A native of Illinois, Shannon moved to Madison in 2002, the same year as her sister, Mary Jo Walker. Walker, a former Dane County Humane Society employee, has similar concerns about their brother's death: "It doesn't seem right to me at all."

Michael Connell — who died at age 45, leaving a wife and four kids — was a computer networking expert who lived near Akron. Last July 17, an attorney who's filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to rig elections in Ohio held a press conference at which he identified Connell as a principal witness.

The attorney, Cliff Arnebeck of Columbus, Ohio, tells Isthmus he doesn't believe Connell was engaged in criminal activity but may have been a "data-processing implementer" for those who were. "I was told he was at the table when some criminal things were discussed."

A week after the press conference, on July 24, Arnebeck wrote U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey seeking protection for Connell, whom he said had been "threatened" by Rove, a key player in the campaigns of George W. Bush. Arenebeck says Connell was told through an intermediary that unless he agreed to "take the fall" for election fraud in Ohio, his wife [and New Media partner] faced prosecution for lobby law violations. There was no claim of a threat on Connell's person.

Arnebeck was permitted to depose Connell last Nov. 3. The portion of this deposition that dealt with the alleged threats was sealed, but Arnebeck is preparing a motion to make it all public. He affirms that Connell denied any involvement in voter fraud, but thinks Rove still had reason to regard him as a threat.

"The problem that Mike Connell represented is [he was] a guy of conscience," says Arnebeck. "If it came right down to it, he would not commit perjury." Arnebeck "absolutely" would have called Connell as a witness in his lawsuit.

Shannon and Mary Jo both say their brother, a devout Catholic, seemed upset in the weeks before his death. Mary Jo feels he was "stressed out and depressed" on his birthday last November; Shannon says he atypically did not respond to an email she'd sent.

On Dec. 19, Connell flew alone in his single-engine Piper Supercub from a small airport near Washington, D.C. The plane crashed on its final approach to his hometown Akron-Canton Airport, between two houses. The cause is still under investigation but is presumed accidental.

The blogosphere refuses to accept this. "Mike was getting ready to talk," writes one online journalist who labels Connell a source. "He was frightened."

Connell's widow has rejected such speculation. "He wasn't about to talk, because there was nothing to talk about," Heather Connell told the Huffington Post. "Nobody did anything wrong."

Shannon Connell, for her part, dismisses reports that her brother was warned not to fly, but still considers the crash that killed him "very suspicious." Michael was an experienced pilot, and his plane had recently been serviced. Plus there's the timing — "after the deposition and before the trial. It just seems very convenient."
Arnebeck goes further in suggesting foul play. "I have been told by multiple sources," he says, "that this plane crash was not an accident, and by multiple sources that the technology is available to bring down a plane in this way."

What's his evidence? Arnebeck repeatedly cites a recent online article by Minnesota emeritus professor Jim Fetzer. The article, datelined Madison and headlined "Has Cheney Been Murdering Americans?", mentions Connell along with other possible victims, including Sen. Paul Wellstone and Pat Tillman, the former NFL player killed in Afghanistan.

Michael Connell's sisters don't know what to believe. Says Shannon, "I really just want the truth to come out." So does Mary Jo, who doubts this will happen: "With so many things that people in power get away with in this country, I don't expect anyone to ever be named, much less prosecuted, in the death of my brother."

Links to referenced articles:

• "One of My Sources Died in a Plane Crash Last Night..." by Larisa Alexandrovna, 12/20/08
• Election Attorney Arnebeck Sent E-mail to Mukasey in July Warning of Threat Against Connell by Oregon Voter Rights Coalition, 12/22/08.
• "Mike Connell Was Warned Not to Fly Before Crash" by Wayne Madsen, Online Journal, 12/22/2008
• "The Intriguing Death of Top GOP Consultant Michael Connell" by Thomas B. Edsall, Huffington Post, 1/25/09
• "Has Cheney Been Murdering Americans?" by Jim Fetzer, OpEdNews, April 12, 2009
• Wikipedia entry on Michael Connell

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

U.S. Spy Chief: 9/11 Could and Should Have Been Prevented

The CIA had enough information to request a special meeting with Condi Rice, the N.S.A. to the president at the time, and enough information to warn the president Aug. 6th, that we know of. The White House was warned time and time again. They went deaf.

Government employees who even spoke of the dangers of terrorism were derided and even threatened.

Why?

US Spy Chief: 9/11 "Could Have Been Prevented"
By Jason Ryan and Theresa Cook
ABC News

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Director of National Intelligence says US didn't connect available information.

Six years after the deadliest attack on U.S. soil, the head of U.S. spy operations admitted to lawmakers that "9/11 should have and could have been prevented."

Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, told members of the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday that "it was an issue of connecting information that was available."

McConnell, explaining that the intelligence community was, at the time, very focused on foreign threats, said the community allowed itself "to be separated from anything that was potentially domestic," and that domestic threats were "not something we [were] supposed to be concerned with."

"Yeah, that translates to negligence," charged committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich.

"Or interpretation of the law - of how the culture had evolved," McConnell countered.

Given the vast resources of the intelligence community, along with the FBI's and CIA's knowledge that al Qaeda had an interest in flight training, and had sent 9/11 hijackers Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi and terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui to undertake such training in the United States, McConnell said, "For whatever reason, we didn't connect the dots."

A federal judge in Virginia sentenced Moussaoui, the only person indicted in connection with the 9/11 attacks, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, in May 2006. He is serving his time at a super-maximum security federal facility in Florence, Colo.

"We could have done a better job as a community," McConnell told the House panel.

McConnell's admissions before the panel took a statement he made on June 29 a few steps further.

In his earlier remarks, McConnell said, "The rules that were established during the Cold War and post-70s served us well, but it created seams. In my view, the 9/11 tragedy should have been prevented. It was preventable. But, I think the terrorists took advantage of the seams that had been created in the process for how we conduct our affairs, both intelligence and law enforcement."

The 9/11 Commission criticized the National Security Agency and its ability to analyze intercepted communications, noting in its final report, "While the NSA had the technical capability to report on communications with suspected terrorist facilities in the Middle East, the NSA did not seek FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court warrants to collect communications between individuals in the United States and foreign countries, because it believed that this was an FBI role.

"It also did not want to be viewed as targeting persons in the United States and possibly violating laws that governed NSA's collection of foreign intelligence," the report continued.

Intelligence officials had previously stated that the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program was established after analyzing the pre-9/11 movements and communications of the hijackers after the attacks.

After poring over the hijackers' phone calls and e-mails, investigators noticed missed opportunities - communications that could have been intercepted, and possibly would have tipped investigators to the coming attacks.

After a review by lawyers from the White House, NSA and Justice Department, the program operated at the NSA, and allowed the agency to perform warrantless electronic surveillance of suspected al Qaeda members in the United States.

Much of Tuesday's hearing focused on changes in the FISA law, and technical aspects of the government's data collection programs.

Shortly after the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program was transferred to the FISA court's jurisdiction in January 2007, a secret order from the court required intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications that were routed on U.S. communication networks.

Given the NSA's ability to collect communications and data from around the world and the Internet, the nation's security officials faced a daunting task. McConnell told the House Judiciary Committee that, in some cases, this meant that the U.S. was required to get a warrant to intercept Iraqi insurgent communications.

He added that the changes made to FISA under the Protect America Act, signed into law in August, provided wider surveillance coverage of terrorism targets by freeing up resources.

Civil liberties groups have long voiced concerns about the changes in the law, and over the NSA program. The Terrorist Surveillance Program had operated covertly until it was revealed in a December 2005 story by the New York Times. A pending leak investigation is underway by the Justice Department over the disclosure.

Congress is currently holding hearings on making changes in the FISA law permanent. At the Tuesday hearing, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said, "The power to invade people's privacy cannot be exercised unchecked."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Domestic Spying Much Worse than Administration Admitted

In an attempt to get Lil' Alberto off the perjury hook, the administration admits that their Domestic spying program was much broader than they have admitted previously, just as we suspected all along.

In doing so, they have failed to get Gonzo off the hook. Instead they may have turned the hook into a noose and flushed the whole administration further down into the sewer

Now we want to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

How much of the data-mining being done by the NSA is being used for political campaign purposes?

Did the other surveillance activities Gonzo talks about involve spying on political opposition, including Democrats, war protesters, news reporters, bloggers, etc?


NSA Spying Part of Broader Effort
Intelligence Chief Says Bush Authorized Secret Activities Under One Order

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 1, 2007; A01

The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described.

The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrant-less surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included "a number of . . . intelligence activities" and that a name routinely used by the administration -- the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- applied only to "one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more."

"This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged," McConnell said.

The program that Bush announced was put under a court's supervision in January, but the administration now wants congressional approval to do much of the same surveillance without a court order.

McConnell's letter was aimed at defending Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales from allegations by Democrats that he may have committed perjury by telling Congress that no legal objections were raised about the TSP. Gonzales said a legal fight in early 2004 was focused on "other intelligence activities" than those confirmed by Bush, but he never connected those to Bush's executive order.

But in doing so, McConnell's letter also underscored that the full scope of the NSA's surveillance program under Bush's order has not been revealed. The TSP described by Bush and his aides allowed the interception of communication between the United States and other countries where one party is believed to be tied to al-Qaeda, so other types of communication or data are presumably being collected under the parts of the wider NSA program that remain hidden.

News reports over the past 20 months have detailed a range of activities linked to the program, including the use of data mining to identify surveillance targets and the participation of telecommunication companies in turning over millions of phone records. The administration has not publicly confirmed such reports.

A spokesman for McConnell declined to elaborate on the letter. The Justice Department also declined to comment.

Specter was noncommittal yesterday on whether McConnell's explanation resolved his questions about the accuracy of Gonzales's previous testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Specter is the ranking Republican. Specter said he was waiting for a separate letter from the attorney general to provide additional clarification.

"If he doesn't have a plausible explanation, then he hasn't leveled with the committee," Specter said on CNN. Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that "the department will continue to work with Senator Specter to address his concerns" but declined to comment further.

McConnell's letter leaves maneuvering room for both sides in the political fracas over whether Gonzales has been truthful in his testimony. On the one hand, the NSA was clearly engaged in activities that were distinct enough to require different "legal bases" authorizing their use, according to McConnell's account.

"If you think about it technically, it is pretty clear that the NSA desk that does communications intercepts is separate from the desk that does data mining of call records," said Kim Taipale, executive director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy, a New York-based nonprofit group. "Those are separate processes, and to think of them as separate programs is not a stretch."

On the other hand, the activities were authorized under a single presidential order and were all part of an NSA effort to gather communications about suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That helps explain why many Democratic lawmakers and administration officials -- including FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III -- viewed the wiretapping as part of a larger NSA program, rather than a separate effort, as Gonzales's testimony has suggested.

"Both sides have a legitimate case, if you want to be legalist about it," Taipale said.

The 45-day reauthorization of a single presidential order was probably a "bureaucratic convenience" that eliminated the need to issue multiple authorizations, he added.

Kate Martin, executive director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the new disclosures show that Gonzales and other administration officials have "repeatedly misled the Congress and the American public" about the extent of NSA surveillance efforts.

"They have repeatedly tried to give the false impression that the surveillance was narrow and justified," Martin said. "Why did it take accusations of perjury before the DNI disclosed that there is indeed other, presumably broader and more questionable, surveillance?"

Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who was among a group of four Democratic senators who called last week for a perjury investigation of Gonzales, said: "The question of whether Attorney General Gonzales perjured himself looms as large now as it did before this letter.

"This letter is no vindication of the attorney general," he said.

Staff writer Joby Warrick and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.