Death In The Air

Paul Wellstone airplane "accident" (Democrat, Iraq war opponent)

Mel Carnahan, (Democrat) Carnahan was the second Missouri politician to die in a small plane crash. The first was Democratic Representative Jerry Litton, whose plane crashed the night he won the Democratic nomination for senate in 1976.

Liberal Republican John Heinz, (There once were liberal Republicans) opponent of the Vietnam War, proponent of health care, social services, public transportation and the environment. Urged reconciliation with Cuba. Landing gear on his small plane failed to function, and a helicopter sent to observe the problem crashed into his plane.

John Tower, (Right wing Republican) also died in a small plane crash. Tower was best known as the chair of the Tower Commission, which investigated the Reagan/Bush era Iran/Contra scandal. Led Commission that issued a report that was critical of the Reagan Administration's connections with Iran and the Nicaraguan contra guerillas.

Another member of a prominent government commission who died in an airplane accident was former Democratic representative and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs. Boggs was a member of the Warren Commission that whitewashed the JFK assasination. He went public years later with his "doubts" about Lee Harvey Oswald being the "lone gunman." Vanished with Nicholas Begich Nicholas Joseph "Nick" Begich, Sr. (April 6, 1932 – undetermined, presumed dead October 16, 1972) was a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives from Alaska. He disappeared in a 1972 plane crash.

Texas Democratic Representative Mickey Leland also died in a plane crash.

Another American politician to die overseas in a plane crash was the Clinton administration's Commerce Secretary, Ronald Brown, whose plane went down in the Balkans.


Mario Cuomo - A Democrat in An Airplane
Cuomo 's Plane Is Crippled, Forcing Emergency LandingBy DON TERRY

New York Times (1857-Current file); Nov 21, 1988; ProQuest Historical Newspapers

The New York Times (1851 - 2001)pg. B3

The article reports that "shortly before 2AM" the aircraft "which was overhauled last year at a cost of about $700,000 "began to fill with smoke and an acrid odor" and made an emergency landing at a small airfield in Pennsylvania. "A network of air traffic controllers scatered across three states and a plane flying nearby helped guide the Governor's crippled aricraft to a safe landing at the airport, which was closed...." "Some transmissions from the air traffic controllers to Cuomo's plane were garbled."The same plane had been forced to make an emergency landing in July with Cuomo on board. Cuomo dropped out of the 1988 presidential race and declined to run in 1992.

The Mystery of Mario Cuomo
by Halton Adler Mann
President, Vice President, Supreme Court Justice. Many American politicians have lusted for the first, settled for the second and accepted the third when the first two prizes were not to be theirs. But only ONE man, Mario M. Cuomo, former three term Governor of New Yorkdeclined all THREE perfect and predictably successful opportunities to leavethe political battlefield and the highest elective and appointive positionsto lower common denominators, to those who were monomaniacal in their desireto be next to or at the top of Disraeli's "greasy pole". How to explain this inexplicable abdication of personal and political destiny, specifically, Governor Cuomo's refusal to run for president in 1988 or 1992--in the latter year with his private plane on the Albany tarmac--to take him to meet the New Hampshire registration deadline as a presidential candidate? Governor Cuomo's stated reason for spurning the second presidential opportunity--to stay in Albany and debate the budget with State Senate President RalphMarino--was a ridiculous excuse no one accepted. Perhaps Cuomo did not want to be president, certainly not as passionately as Bill Clinton and he thought that the inevitable primary battle would be divisive and Democrat-defeating. Rationales accompany refusals. But 1992 was his second presidential prospect and not the best. In 1988,once Gary Hart self-destructed in personal scandal and Michael Dukakis was predicted to be the worst national nominee in Democratic Party history with the exception of Al Gore who SHOULD have won the 2000 race comfortably, Mario Cuomo should have entered and would have won, defeating George Bush, Senior before his incumbency,as easily as Bill Clinton did four years later. (Mario Cuomo would have nominated a progressive Black judge to Thurgood Marshall's Supreme Courtseat, therefore giving Gore the fifth vote he would need to continue the Florida recount. Clarence Thomas would have remained an unknown name in the meretricious American spectacle.)

Former CIA Agent Tells Glenn Beck on Fox News That He Wants To See A Grave Attack on the United States:


Michael Scheuer is hoping Osama bin Laden Detonates a major weapon in the U.S.:
" The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.



"Because it's going to take a grassroots, bottom up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation, again. Only Osama can execute an attack that will force Americans to demand a government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary. "

...and Beck just sits there nodding in agreement.