Tornadoes and Koch Industries: An Elegant Solution

A Declaration of Emergency

Yesterday, tornadoes swept through the south of the United States, killing 128 people in Alabama and 32 others in Mississippi and leaving long trails of destruction. Homes and businesses were left as piles of rubble. Towns were plowed down the middle and many residents, having lost all they owned, felt lucky just to be alive. My sympathies go out to the survivors and my condolences to the families that have lost loved ones.

This all came after a week in which storms have torn through a half a dozen states in what meteorologists have called the deadliest season in nearly four decades. Republican Governor Robert Bentley of Alabama declared a state of emergency and said he was deploying 2,000 National Guardsman.

Similarly, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour declared a state of emergency for 39 counties. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones or property in these devastating spring storms,” Gov. Barbour said. “A large section of our state has been impacted, and our emergency responders are doing an excellent job in helping communities. This State of Emergency declaration will allow the state to offer aid to begin recovery efforts.”

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency coordinates with the Federal emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA in administering disaster recovery. Federal sources contributes at least 75% of damage repair costs while while state and local entities share the remaining 25 percent or less of repair costs.

Nobody can blame the governor for requesting money when it is urgently needed. However, there's a ugly, hypocritical side to Barbour's requests. Like numerous Republican politicians of late, Gov. Haley Barbour last March chastised Obama for "limitless government" and out of control spending. His stand against Big Government has made him something of a "politician of note" in the Republican party.

Mind you this is the same governor who easily took $15 billion in aid following Hurricane Katrina, which critics of Barbour have charged, was mishandled. Timothy J. Burger, writing for Bloomberg notes, the use of those funds has raised many questions.

No evidence has surfaced that Barbour violated the law; at the same time, the pattern that emerges from public records and interviews raises ``many red flags,'' said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group in Falls Church, Virginia, that investigates the investments of government officials. ``At the minimum, the public is entitled to a full explanation of the facts,'' he said.

Exactly what Boehm is referring to is illustrated in an article from the website, The National Corruption Index :  

The wife of Barbour’s nephew, Rosemary Barbour, was one of the biggest Mississippi-based winners of Katrina contracts. Her company, Alacatec LLC, picked up nearly $300 million in contracts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the General Services Administration, the bulk of it for trailer maintenance. The FBI began an investigation in 2007.

Of course, there's' nothing particularly remarkable about a politician being hypocritical. Of course, in Babour's case, in terms of hypocrisy, it is a little above the usual standard.

Should We Talk About The Weather?

But first of all, let's take a small step back and examine what on earth is going on with the weather. Most meteorologists have already declared this year to be something special in terms of storm activity and indeed, records seem to show an overall increase in the number of tornadoes from decade to decade. A 2011 preliminary count from all National Weather Service reports for the month of April is an eye-opening 654 tornadoes, compared to 2010 count of 139 and 2009 count of 226.

So what is the cause? NOAA 's answer is somewhat guarded.

Does "global warming" cause tornadoes? No. Thunderstorms do. The harder question may be, "Will climate change influence tornado occurrence?" The best answer is: We don't know. According to the National Science and Technology Council's Scientific Assessment on Climate Change, "Trends in other extreme weather events that occur at small spatial scales--such as tornadoes, hail, lightning, and dust storms--cannot be determined at the present time due to insufficient evidence."

Many researchers feel the evidence suggests a more direct influence.

Research Meteorologists found that the temperature changes brought on by global warming are significant enough to cause an increase in the occurrence of severe storms.

"What we found is that increases in human-induced greenhouse gases will lead to more frequent severe storms in the United States," Jeff Trapp, Ph.D., a meteorologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said.

Based on the models, the researchers believe the number of days that favor the formation of severe storms could more than double in places like Atlanta and New York. These added storms will likely hit areas during already heavy storm seasons and extend wet weather seasons.

"This obviously impacts people in terms of potential hazards to their life and property," Dr. Trapp said.

Purdue University scientists are not alone in that assessment. NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms.

"..[T]he model suggests that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common with warming.'

Clouding the Issue

This kind of research isn't universally accepted, especially by climate change deniers. According to a Greenpeace report, one of the largest private corporations in the country has spent a veritable fortune in undermining climate change research by funding organizations that spread inaccurate and misleading information about climate science and clean energy policies.

This report documents roughly 40 climate denial and opposition organizations receiving Koch foundation grants in recent years, including:

• More than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) for its nationwide “Hot Air Tour” campaign to spread misinformation about climate science and opposing clean energy and climate legislation

• More than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of misinformation on climate and environmental policy issues.

• Over $1 million to the Cato Institute, which disputes the scientific evidence behind global warming, questions the rationale for taking climate action, and has been heavily involved in spinning the recent ClimateGate story.

• $800,000 to the Manhattan Institute, which has hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years. Lomborg is a prominent media spokesperson who challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.

• $365,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) which advocates against taking action on cliimate change because warming is “inevitable” and expensive to address.

Additionally the report cites the tremendous political power that the Koch brothers have used to defeat carbon-limiting regulatory legislation, through direct federal lobbying and campaign contributions.

• Spent $37.9 million from 2006 to 2009 for direct lobbying on oil and energy issues, outspent only by ExxonMobil ($87.8 million) and Chevron Corporation ($50 million).

• Spent $5.74 million in PAC money for candidates, committees, and campaign expenditures since the 2006 election cycle.

• Contributed at least $270,800 to federal political party committees since the 2006 election cycle.

Flexing Muscles

It shouldn't surprise anybody that Koch Industries should be willing to invest a fortune to derail any legislation that might negatively affect its ability to do business, much of which involves the petro-chemical sector.

Koch Industries would certainly have a lot to lose if carbon emission industries were more carefully regulated.  

According to SourceWatch, for example, Koch Carbon trades and transports petroleum coke, coal, cement, pulp and paper, sulfur and other commodities, the Koch Exploration Company acquires, develops and trades petroleum and natural gas properties in the United States, Canada and Brazil. Flint Hills Resources operate crude oil refineries in Alaska, Minnesota, and Texas and petrochemical plants in Illinois, Michigan and Texas. The Koch Pipeline Company owns and operates approximately 4,000 miles of pipelines used to transport crude oil, refined petroleum products, natural gas liquids and chemicals while the Koch Alaska Pipeline Company owns an approximate 3 percent interest in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Koch Industries also owns a 28% interest in the Colonial Pipeline Company which it describes as the "owner and operator of the world’s largest-volume refined products pipeline.

That's capitalism in action and with an estimated of $100 billion (2008 figures) Koch Industries can afford to flex its muscles.

And another way that the Koch brothers have flex their political muscle is through the funding of political organizations like Americans for Prosperity (mentioned above) which has been, among other duties, useful in campaigns against any legislation involving cap and trade or carbon emissions.

Purporting to be a grassroots group, AFP, founded and chaired by David Koch, is the "third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations, behind the Cato Institute and the George Mason University Foundation,according to DeSmogBlog.

AFP is a non-profit organization who does not to disclose its donors.  However, the Media Transparency project shows from 2003-2006, Americans for Prosperity received $1,181,000 from conservative foundations.  $1 million of that funding was given by the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation--one of the Koch Family Foundations.

In the past years, the AFP has organized various Tea Party events throughout the nation. Koch was reported to have said at a Americans for Prosperity Conference in 2009 that in creating AFP:

"'we envisioned a mass movement, a state-based one, but national in scope, of hundreds of thousands of American citizens from all walks of life standing up and fighting for the economic freedoms that made our nation the most prosperous society in history.'"

In other words, the birth of the Tea Party.

A Fair Solution

Last year there was a string of weather related disasters, such as flooding in Nashville, tornadoes in the Midwest, extensive blizzards throughout the nation and powerful hurricanes in the southern states. The problem is simple: If Tea Party members wish to limit the role of big government and also wish to reduce taxes, who then is going to pay for clean-up and rebuilding? Not to mention preparedness training and search and rescue. Who is going to build the levies and the dikes that keep the waters back? Who is going to keep the snow off the streets if nobody is paying taxes?

Fear not, I come with what I consider a brilliant and fair solution to this problem. Why shouldn't Koch Industries pay for the clean up and rebuilding? The Koch Brothers do not seem at all hesitant about spending their fortunes on lobbying against climate change and cap and trade; they don't seem to worry about the vast sums of money for setting up fake grass roots organizations, or sponsoring phony science. After all, they are the ones that are making enormous sums of money by dumping more and more carbon into the environment which seems to be causing more and more dangerous weather.

Let's just drop the middle men. The government officials, the regulatory busy-bodies, and the corrupt politicians asking for their piece of the action.

With that problem solved, let's take a moment and return to Mississippi Governor Barbour. By decrying the sins of Big Government while happily taking federal emergency funds again and again, Barbour seems to want his cake and eat it too. but that's not all of it.

During the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill Barbour said he was not sure it was a good idea for the federal government to make BP put $20 billion into escrow to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Barbour said that BP needed to use its money to drill oil wells and produce revenue.

So, making the government pay for cleaning up tornadoes and hurricanes is okay, even while you are condemning Big Government spending.. but making oil companies clean up after their own spill is a question?

It's not all that remarkable really, I suppose. ThinkProgress points out:

Barbour raised significant amounts in campaign contributions from the industry, and from 1999 to 2003, was a lobbyist for various energy interests. Even as oil was touching Mississippi shores in the summer of 2010, Barbour downplayed the effects of the catastrophic spill. A ThinkProgress review of IRS documents revealed that with Barbour at the helm, the RGA received over $5 million in contributions from the oil and gas industry – including four of the Big Five oil companies – in just one year:

• $1,000,000 from David Koch, $25,000 from Koch Industries
• $625,000 from Exxon Mobil
• Over $150,000 from Chevron
• $50,000 from Shell
• $25,000 from ConocoPhillips

So, Koch Brothers, let's get those angry Tea Party members out there, let them burn off some of that anti-government fury. I imagine many of the people who have lost everything already belong to the Tea Party.

Just like Michele Bachmann, that popular Americans for Prosperity event speaker, said, “Do you see what we can do when we all work together?”

---

Digg Tags: Koch Industries, Climate Change, Tea Party

To retweet this post: http://twitter.com/#!/ANomadicView/status/63674235305992192

Republican Faust: The Rise and Fall of Mike Connell -3

Accident or Conspiracy?

The timing of Mike Connell's sudden death in a plane crash was. given the situation he was involved in, remarkably coincidental, to say the least. It is the kind of event that naturally creates speculation about conspiracy.

Of course, planes all too often do fall out of the sky. In the year of Connell's death, there were 156 other crashes and 884 other deaths. And the most likely scenario- as opposed to sabotage- would be problems with ice on the wings.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report  speculates that the most probable cause of the crash was a combination of pilot error and weather conditions. Connell was faulted for deciding to conduct the flight into "known icing conditions."

Glenn Pew writing for AVweb, an aviation news source, summarized the report in this way:

The NTSB's early findings are subject to change and may contain errors but state that "no anomalies were noted with the flight control system that would have precluded normal operation." The report notes that damage to the propeller is consistent with a power-on impact and the landing gear was extended. The NTSB found that the instrument-rated Connell had received radar vectors that provided an intercept to the ILS approach for Runway 23, about two miles from the outer marker. The report states that, as the plane was inbound from the outer marker, "ATC advised [the aircraft] that it was left of course." After that, things -- including already poor weather conditions -- got progressively worse.

Connell responded to ATC with "correcting." The report states he was at that time still flying the 3,200-foot intermediate segment altitude for the approach. ATC then advised the pilot he was "well left of the localizer" and asked the pilot if he would like to be re-sequenced. The pilot responded with "like to correct" and at 2.5 miles from the airport asked to execute a 360-degree turn. Weather at the airport at this time was deteriorating. It was reported two minutes prior to the crash as visibility 9 miles, broken at 500 and overcast at 1,000 with a two-degree temperature/dewpoint spread hovering near freezing.

Approximately 15 minutes after the crash, visibility had dropped to 2 1/2 miles in mist with overcast at 400 and 1,000. While flying the approach, Connell had inquired about reports of icing and ATC responded it had none. After requesting the 360-degree turn, ATC directed the aircraft to climb and maintain 3,000 feet. Connell responded, providing confirmation and a heading, then declared an emergency. A witness saw the aircraft descend out of the clouds in a nose-down attitude with the engine "roaring" [emphasis mine] and lost visual contact when the plane descended below the tree line. The trail of wreckage was about 290 feet long. Connell earned his private certificate in 2006, held an instrument rating, and had a total reported flight time of 510 hours.

The idea, which has been suggested by experienced pilots is that Connell may have overestimated his abilities and decided to fly in conditions he was not experienced with. Because of a scheduled Christmas party that evening, Connell could very well have felt some degree of psychological pressure to return to Akron which might have affected his decision not to cancel the flight.

From an outsider's point of view, sabotaging a plane, as means to murder certainly seems very unreliable method. Like a lot of conspiracy theories, the more you look at the complications, the harder it is to believe. For example, how exactly could it be done? How could you remove traces of tampering? Above all, aren't there easier ways to "off" a person?

For a plausible theory of sabotage, these are questions that would need to be resolved. Otherwise, the death of Connell can only, at best, be considered highly suspicious and dreadfully ill-timed.

However in researching the case, Rebecca Abrahams, a documentary film and television producer, surprisingly found that the possibility of foul play by plane sabotage is not exactly so far-fetched. When she interviewed former CIA operative John Perkins about the plausibility of murder by plane crash, Perkins told her that plane crashes have always been a weapon of choice among Jackals, that is professional hit-men. He pointed out the advantages.

"It's so easy to cover it up. The evidence is destroyed and everybody knows airplanes are fragile anyway, small airplanes in particular. So it's a very clean type of assassination in terms of ways to do it because the area where the plane crash happens can be quickly cordoned off . . . and the evidence can be cleaned up very quickly and most of it is destroyed anyway. But if there's anything left, it can be disposed of very, very quickly."

No matter what you might think about the validity of the sabotage theory, there were several unusual things that occurred. Things that need to be explained.

First, there was the unexplained "lockdown" on information about the flight that denied first responders timely information about the number of persons on the flight.

According to Captain Lorin Geisner of the Greentown Fire Department, Connell’s personal items recovered from the crash site included a passport, a driver's license, a rosary and a laptop computer. One item, however, was conspicuously missing. His Blackberry. This, according to his family, would normally have been found in his backpack. The backpack was found zipped, the ear-piece also located but the Blackberry, with hundreds, possibly thousands, of sensitive files and e-mails relating to Karl Rove and the Bush administration was never recovered.

According to sources cited in the Simon Worrall piece, The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru, there were other anomalies. Normally, a night crash scene would be roped off and investigated in daylight. In this case representatives of the NTSB and FAA used light towers to photograph and document the scene. Connell’s plane was hastily removed to a secure hangar under cover of darkness. Who made this decision and why?

Court records related to the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell and filed by attorney Clifford Arnebeck refer an investigative report (by Kyle Hence of RAW STORY).

The reporter's notes Hence took while investigating the crash events are very interesting indeed.  

Of particular interest is his observation of military personnel at the crash.

Hence was curious to learn more about two soldiers in green uniforms who were at the crash site and, in fact, climbing through the wreckage that night and filmed on local television news coverage.  He was interested to know why the official police report, detailed in every other way, had failed to mention the pair.

Hence was told that it was not uncommon for the the CAP to be used in search and rescue. According the highway patrol officer that Hence spoke to, the pair had arrived, offered help and were quickly turned away. When shown stills of the soldiers climbing through the plane wreckage, the officer back peddled on his original statement and told the reporter the pair were asked to help locate the electronic tracking device. 

The local deputy sheriff in the area, also a Civil Air Patrol captain and Public Affairs Officer for nearby squadron, told Hence that he was not aware of any CAP involvement. He offered a few names of people it might have been. The highway patrol had not asked for credentials of the soldiers on the night of the crash.

There is this from an interesting article provided by RAW STORY:

According to the incident report prepared by the state highway patrol and examined by Raw Story on site, Sgt. Leo Shirkey was the first law enforcement officer on the scene at 6:22. Off duty Post Commander Lt. Eric Sheppard and Trooper McCarthy, a plain-clothed investigator from the Canton Post, arrived within an hour.

The incident report lists the Stark County Examiner Harry Campbell as arriving at 7:03 PM to collect the body.

An FAA Aviation Safety Inspector arrived at the scene several hours later, and a clean up crew worked through the night to prepare the plane for transport and storage.

By midnight that evening the site had been cleared and by sunrise the wreckage had been moved to a hanger at Akron-Fulton airport.

Despite this notable efficiency in cleaning up the plane wreckage, widow Heather Connell reported that, to her horror, she found body parts of her husband at the crash scene six days later. She told an interviewer "How is that a proper investigation? How is that acceptable? How dare they leave pieces of my husband lying there!”

On Dec. 20, the plane wreckage was moved by Belden Village Towing to a hangar owned by Summit Aviation at Akron-Fulton International, a non-commercial airport which houses a large Lockheed Martin facility. The State Highway Patrol said that hangar space at nearby Akron-Canton Regional Airport was not available.

Kyle Hence later visited Summit Aviation on Dec. 24 and located the wreckage, which was being held in a building without gated security or security camera surveillance. NTSB officials had examined the wreckage the day before.

Thus, according to this information, the wreckage was apparently left unattended and unsecured for three days.

After-Action
Coincidentally, the day before the Connell crash marked the death of a famous whistle-blower,Mark Felt, better known as "Deep Throat". Felt played a key role in secretly supplying journalists with information during the Watergate scandal. That name would suddenly- and shockingly- materialize once again in the Connell case.

According to an article in The Brad Blog, the Connell mystery took a very disturbing turn when the family received a memo penned by someone using the name "Mark Felt." The memo was a kind of after-action report and copies were also sent to, among others, the FBI 's supervisory special agent in Cleveland.

According to this report, Mike Connell was targeted for assassination by a team that was tasked to eliminate an "NST" or a national security target. According to the accompanying letter, the author writes that the after-action report "is not supposed to exist." In addition to the FBI in Cleveland, the document was sent to five other parties.

The details of the report explain how at least three members of the team were involved in sabotaging the aircraft at College Park Airport just prior to Connell's flight.

The after-action report stated that the area was "sanitized" and the team exited College Park airport via Indian Creek Park at 0557. The team was reported to be OOA (Out of Area) at 0642.In fact, since the 9/11 attacks, and owing to the airport's proximity to the national capital, the operations of the airport have been severely restricted by the Transportation Security Administration in the interest of national security.

Hoax? Stephen Spoonamore reportedly thinks so. Whether or not it was somebody's attempt to play a sadistic hoax on the family and the investigators in the Connell case, it would have certainly taken a lot of gall (and stupidity) to send the memo to FBI offices. With all of the sophisticated lab testing at their disposal, it would have required a great deal of arrogance and confidence that the memo would not be traced to its origins.

Unresolved
Attorney Cliff Arnebeck has spoken bluntly about his opinions of Karl Rove in this interview:

Rove is a common criminal, and his technique is to suppress the targeted classes of voters, defame the Democratic candidate, and then tamper with the votes, preferably using electronic voting machines. He creates the appearance that the defamatory attack worked and reversed the pre-election polling, and then he attacks the exit polling as being not accurate.

When asked by the interviewer how he thought Rove could have gotten away with stealing the 2004 Presidential election, he replied,  

In that case, Rove used the Iraq War as cover. He could paint people as unpatriotic for daring to question the integrity of the wartime commander in chief. I believe Rove destroyed emails that would have revealed his role in extending that war. 

Thus, you have a story of a religious man whose reported mission to "saved innocent babies" allowed him to be corrupted to a point that he helped put people in power that wished to prolong a needless war. Heavy stuff but I somehow doubt Hollywood will be making the film anytime soon.

On December 22, 2009, one year after Connell's death, nearly to the day, Judge Algenon L. Marbley denied a motion for re-consideration, effectively closing the case.

There is a lot more to the story. There always is. Certainly more research should be done on SMARTech, the company that owns the servers in Chattanooga, Tennessee and its owner and former friend of Connell, Jeff Averbeck.  I'll save that for another time.

Like many events during the Bush-Cheney years, the mystery behind the inopportune death of the man who knew so much about the GOP computer secrets will sadly remain unsatisfactorily unresolved. That is regrettable, I think. The corruption case was fairly strong but without a few more pieces of key evidence it was to be unsupportable in any court.

For his part, Connell, like Icarus paid the price for flying too high, and like Faust, came to regret his bargain with dark powers.

---

Republican Faust: The Rise and Fall of Mike Connell -2

Taking the Fall

After agreeing initially to give critical information in a vote-rigging case in Ohio, Connell, for whatever reasons, apparently had a change of heart and hesitated. Given the potential disastrous consequences of defying his former bosses, it is perhaps understandable that he should have second thoughts.

Back in Ohio courts, King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell was an ongoing case filed on August 31, 2006 and dragged on and on. The former Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell the defendant, was accused of "having conspired to deprive and continue to deprive Ohioans of their right to vote and have, in fact, deprived and continue to deprive Ohioans of their right to vote by, in a selective and discriminatory manner, unfairly allocate election resources (such as voting machines), institute a system of provisional ballots, purge voter registrations, and broke the bi-partisan chain of custody ballots."

Clifford Bryan, writing for Examiner.com, outlines the charges in the case.

It has since been alleged that at several points on election night, the Ohio secretary of state’s official Web site, which was responsible for reporting the results, was being hosted by a server in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Blackwell had hired a company called GDC Limited to run the IT systems, which had subcontracted the job to Michael Connell’s company, GovTech. Connell had in turn sub-contracted SMARTech, an IT firm based in Chattanooga, to act, it was claimed, as a backup server.

“By looking at the URLs on the Web site, we discovered that there were three points on election night when SMARTech’s computers took over from the secretary of state,” says Arnebeck [ the prosecuting attorney of the case]. “It is during that period that we believe votes were manipulated.”

“We decided to try to bring a racketeering claim against Rove under Ohio law,” says Cliff Arnebeck, “We detected a pattern of criminal activity, and we identified Connell as a key witness, as the implementer for Rove.”

It is worth a moment to stop and take a closer look at Clifford Arnebeck. Like Stephen Spoonamore, the IT specialist that investigated the technical aspects of the electronic vote rigging, Arnebeck was also a Republican and had, in the past, even done some volunteer work for the Republican Party. The son of a postal worker, Arnebeck attended Wesleyan College and Harvard Law School. In 1990 he challenged incumbent Congressman Chalmers Wylie in the GOP primary, but lost badly. Since that time, he became involved in groups that sought to reform the system, including setting term limits and methods for insuring honest elections. And like Spoonamore, Arnebeck saw this issue not as a partisan one but of an ethical issue.

Meanwhile in the summer of 2008, with the presidential election heating up, for Mike Connell, the noose was obviously tightening and events were beginning to take a life of their own. In an attempt to extricate himself from the world of politics, he had sold two of his businesses, including GovTech. He reportedly returned to his religious roots, attending Catholic Mass much more often.

The OhioNewsBureau reported in July of 2004, Attorney Arnebeck asked Nancy H. Rogers, the former dean of the law school at The Ohio State University and interim Attorney General, was asked to provide immunity protection services to Connell.

This request was prompted by information from a confidential source that Karl Rove had threatened that if Mike Connell didn't "take the fall" for cyber-rigging the 2004 election in Ohio, his wife, Heather, would be sued for lobbying law violations.

Clearly the White House was anxious about Connell's testimony and what it would undoubtedly reveal. Meanwhile, the question on everybody's mind was whether Connell would remain loyal to his bosses and possibly perjure himself or would he reveal all that he knew.

Even the attorneys prosecuting the case were unsure what he would do. Throughout the fall of 2008, his plane was being tracked by Arnebeck and his associates so they could serve him with a subpoena.

Here is a video clip of an interview with Arnebeck made in October 2008.

On October 8, 2008, the axe fell. Connell was served with his subpoena at College Park Airfield outside Washington, D.C. Under the terms of the supoena, he was ordered to produce all documents related to the case.

Connell was defiant when challenged. He responded by hiring three high-powered GOP-connected attorneys, including Bill Todd, former counsel to Bush/Cheney '04. Connell's attorneys filed a motion to quash the subpoena and an affidavit stating that his information is confidential.

Convinced that Connell had the vital information n the case, Arnebeck attempted to secure a court order to enforce the subpoena. The judge agreed and, on October 31, Mr. Connell, appearing before a federal judge in Ohio was ordered to testify under oath at a deposition on November 3^rd, the day before the presidential election.

"A Really Nice Christmas Present"

What became of the Connell's sworn deposition? (Even online references are not easy to find.) It was a two-hour closed-door session in Cleveland. A report of the hearing comes from Ohio News. At the hearing, Connell was relaxed but not especially cooperative. Justice Solomon Oliver of the Northern District Court carefully limited the range of the questions that Arnebeck could ask.

For example, threats allegedly made by Rove were off-limits. Connell's lawyers were adamant that the suit was nothing more than a witch hunt. According to reporter John Michael Spinelli, the unimpressed judge advised the prosecution:

"I understand the theories, some of the theories of this case, and I understand some of the emotion around this 2004 election and other elections, but you are not going to win your case for 2004 with this deposition, not right now. And so I am just trying to be clear, you are not going to pack two and a half years of litigation into this deposition." He warned Arnebeck to stick to the issues discussed and not make up for lost time in a case that has very little to show for itself so far. "I can't say that any more strongly than I'm saying that to you now. So you are going to have to be reasonable, and you are going to have to stop at some point. There may be a day when you can come back, and there may be a day when you can follow up."

That day, the day to ask Connell follow-up questions, would never come. Within six weeks, Mike Connell would be dead.. and silent. It surely must have been a relief to many inside the White House.


As quoted in Simon Worrall's excellent article The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru, Connell’s younger sister, Shannon, says:

Mike had been deposed, but he hadn’t been called as a witness yet,” she says of the possibility that her brother was murdered. “He was incredibly loyal to the people he worked for, but he would never have lied under oath. For want of a better expression, I think they played him. His death would have been a really nice Christmas present for Rove and Cheney."

The Velvet Revolution Theory

Two weeks prior to the election of 2008, when it was still uncertain what Connell would or would not reveal in his deposition, Rove had been proclaiming that John McCain could win the ten deciding states and become president. McCain was 

confidently telling everyone that he would win with a surge in the wee hours of election night. McCain said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he can “guarantee” a win on Nov. 4 in a squeaker victory that won’t be clear until late that night. Of course, there's nothing particularly unusual or suspicious about a candidate having a strong sense of self-confidence, even when all the projections show him or her trailing behind.

Velvet Revolution has its own theory about what happened next.

Michael Connell was forced to appear before Solomon Oliver, a Clinton appointed Afro-American federal Judge in Cleveland. After Attorney Cliff Arnebeck accused Connell in open court of rigging elections for Karl Rove, the judge ordered Connell to submit to a sworn deposition 18 hours before the polls were to open. On Monday at noon, Connell was placed under oath and grilled about election fraud, Man in the Middle attacks, Trojan horse manipulations and threats from Rove.

And guess what happened? Connell didn't know a thing! He had no knowledge of any secret steps to change the vote-counts, in any past elections--or in the election to come. He stonewalled like a champion, denying everything.

It was a remarkable performance; but what was even more remarkable was the abrupt reversal, just hours later, by Karl Rove. Rove wrote on his blog late Monday that Obama would win by a landslide--even in those states he had previously predicted McCain would win.

In other words, Rove pulled the plug, because he felt the heat, and knew that using Connell to rig this election too would be too risky.

Manmade Emergencies

The most intriguing question isn't whether Connell helped to steal the elections of 2004 or whether he was silenced for threatening to reveal what he knew. The most interesting question isn't who or how it was done.

The most interesting question for future historians might be this: did the threat that Connell's deposition posed (and subsequent possible subpoenas) cause the power elite inside the upper echelons of the Republican party to have a re-think of their plan for the 2008 elections. And related to that question, what would have been the national reaction if McCain had won by the same slim margin that carried Bush to re-election back in 2004.

It is hard to know but if the Velvet Revolution's theory is true, then it is possible that the Republican administration had already made plans for widespread civil unrest as a result of the election result. Paul Joseph Watson, writing for Prison Planet, wrote back in September 2008,

U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq will be carrying out homeland patrols in America from October 1st in complete violation of Posse Comitatus for the purposes of helping with “civil unrest and crowd control” – which could include dealing with unruly Americans after a complete economic collapse.

The article goes on the cite an Army Times report:

This shocking admission was calmly reported on September 8th by the Army Times website, which reports that from the beginning of next month the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team “Will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.”

The article notes that the deployment “marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.”

The purpose of the unit’s patrols includes helping “with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”

Of course, this is speculation built upon speculation. Some have theorized that this troop deployment was in preparation for some kind of terrorist attack which might have been used to swing the election. Others have also postulated that the deployment of troops for crowd control was related to the economic meltdown and was used to intimidate the legislative branch into passing the unprecedented Bush bailout known as TARP, The Troubled Asset Relief Program, which cost the U.S. taxpayers as much as $300 billion.

Perhaps it served many purposes. We may, of course, never know the reasons behind the move or whether it is in any way related.

If, however, The Velvet Revolution theory is true, then, in the end, Connell's apparently worthless deposition, the only testimony he would ever give -- would have at least served one noble purpose. 

It helped to put a truly democratically-elected president in the White House.

---

The final installment of this series will cover the crash investigation, it flaws and will lay out the case for a conspiracy in the death of Connell.
To re-tweet. click on the pic below:

Republican Faust: The Rise and Fall of Mike Connell - 1

At about 6 p.m. on Friday December 19, 2008 a single-engine 1997 Piper Saratoga aircraft, with only the pilot aboard, crashed into a residential area in Uniontown, Ohio as it was preparing to land at Akron-Canton airport. Upon arriving to the scene, fire crews found only burning wreckage of the plane scattered between homes on Charolais Street. The pilot had been thrown upon impact and had died instantly of massive blunt force trauma, his belongings scattered in the yards.

First responders arrived on the scene immediately after the crash. Even then, irregularities began. Simon Worrall in an article The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru, writes of those first minutes:

Capt. Lorin Geisner of the Greentown Fire Department was the first person to arrive at the scene. “We received a 911 call, so we contacted the tower and asked what size plane it was and how many souls were on board,” he recalls. “But we were informed that the tower was in lockdown and that no information was available.”

This was to be the first of many abnormalities in a case that would send shock waves through the blogosphere with speculations of sabotage and foul play. In the bewildering reality-bending world of conspiracy theories, the events that surround the Connell crash belong in a class all their own.

The Wizard

First and foremost, it was the identity of the pilot that was to cause much of the stir. The name Mike Connell might not have rung any bells in most American homes but, to the Washington establish, particularly amongst the Republican politicians, Connell was a wizard. As president and CEO of Ohio-based New Media Communications Inc., Connell had deep ties to some of the top names in Washington. He offered them something that they desperately wanted: control over their Internet image, the power to market that image and the ability to operate a digital campaign strategy.

Its own company description, written in the vacuous language of the tech world, seems innocuous enough.

New Media Communications designs, develops, and implements web sites and marketing strategies for political advocacy and commercial organizations. The company' services include strategic planning, design, programming, as well as a variety of interactive marketing services that include banner ad creation and placement, e-mail direct marketing, market research, and analysis of digital campaigns. New Media Communications also offers hosting, site optimization, and database integration. It mainly serves entities associated with the Republican Party.

Chris Landers, writing for Business Insider, sheds more light on New Media Communications. Back in 1998, Connell's company got its first high profile client, Jeb Bush, son to one former president and brother to the future one. "New Media designed the www.jeb.org site that made Jeb Bush the first candidate online in the 1998 Florida gubernatorial race."

Additionally, Connell, along with his wife, Heather, formed another company, GovTech Solutions "to pursue government accounts rather than political business."

In some cases, New Media and GovTech Solutions have had contracts with the same clients. New Media might design a campaign Web site for a candidate who, once elected, would contract with GovTech to design a federally funded official site. At least four of the seven New Media clients who won House races in 2004 also used GovTech as the designer for their congressional sites.

By 2004, GovTech had served as Web designer for the official, federally funded Web pages of 37 members of Congress. And the following year, according to House financial statements, GovTech received more than $144,000 in business from 21 Republican House members and Republican-led committees.

In 2002 and 2004, GovTech received authorization from the General Services Administration that allowed federal agencies to purchase services directly from the company without going through the full bidding process.

In short, Connell, as the cyber-tech wizard for the Republican party machine, had become an indispensible player in the Republican machine. And for this, Connell was well-paid.

Between October 2002 and the first half of this year, the General Services Administration reported more than $800,000 paid to GovTech by federal agencies. The company has designed Web sites for the White House, Department of Energy, and the 2004 meeting of the Group of 8 in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, among others.

However, for investigators he would also become a person of interest. His insider knowledge of possible corruption in vote tampering was just beginning to be exploited by investigating attorneys. The information he could have provided the courts would have been instrumental in cracking open one of the biggest voter rigging scandals in American history.

Yet, the full story of Connell's involvement virtually died the moment aircraft slammed into the side of house and exploded in flames.

Climbing the Ladder

Connell was born into a large Irish Roman Catholic family in Peoria, Illinois in 1963. Some have speculated that it was his strong religious advocacy for pro-life that might have been his Achilles' heel, driving him to work alongside people with darker motives. His faith was something he felt strongly about.

Early in his career as a whiz kid, Connell worked with Republican Congressman Jim Leach as his finance director and as a director of voter programs for Senator Dan Coats of Indiana.

In 1998, Connell was contracted to develop a voter contact database for George Bush, Sr. From that point, Connell was the IT man of choice for the Bush family. He would go on to work with Jeb Bush in Florida and when George Bush, Jr. threw in his hat for the presidential race, Connell would help set up the official web site for the candidate.

Connell's fortunes began to prosper. At the ripe old age of 30, Connell would hold the keys to secrets for the Republican Party. According to SourceWatch,

New Media's GOP clients are a "'Who's Who' of Republican politics", having provided campaign web services and Internet strategy for Bush-Cheney 2000/2004, as well as Dick Armey, Spencer Abraham for Senate 2000, Heather Wilson for Congress 2000/2002/2004, Rick Santorum for Senate 2000/2006, and John Thune for Senate 2002/2004 to name just a few. New Media also designed GOP.com for the Republican National Committee, RGA.org for the Republican Governors Association, and between two and three dozen state GOP sites.

In April 2001, Connell spun-off GovTech Solutions from New Media to handle its growing list of federal government clients, such as MajorityWhip.gov for Tom DeLayand Johnny Isakson. Business filings in the state of Ohio show that Govtech's founding members were Connell's wife Heather, and the well-known GOP operative and Chairman of the DCI Group, Thomas J. Synhorst. By 2004, Govtech's clients would grow to include more than 20 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, GOP.gov, the web site of the House Republican Conference, and the House Intelligence, Judiciary, Financial Services, Way and Means, and Administration committees. The latter was acquired while House Administration was chaired by former-U.S. Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, who was convicted in 2006 of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

It was, however, his working relationship with Karl Rove, Senior Advisor and later Deputy Chief of Staff to the President that was to be his most troubling aspect of his rise. Connell helped to set up GWB43.com, the site Karl Rove used for 95-percent of his email communication, using a server owned by SMARTech Corporation. The purpose of using this facility to send and store e-mails by Rove and dozens of other White House staffers.- as opposed to the normal White House servers- was to evade investigators and the Freedom of Information.

Investigators believe that these servers in the basement of building in Tennessee would also be used in a much more astounding way in the 2004: to help steal the presidential election of 2004.

Friendly Servers

Over time, Connell began to find himself involved in the seamier side of politics. Even as far back as 1990, he was fired for "clearly unethical" behavior" from Indiana Senator Coates ' campaign. In addition to his legitimate business, Connell also had a hand in creating Web site for the notorious Swift Boat Veterans’ for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry.

Obviously Connell was having mixed feelings about the things he was being asked to do. “Mike was known as the GOP’s Mister Fix-It,” says Stephen Spoonamore, an IT security expert and friend of Connell’s.

This development of this relationship is detailed in Simon Worrall's The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru,.

The two men had gotten to know each other at Spoonamore’s Washington, D.C. offices in late 2005. “The two of us hit it off,” recalls Spoonamore. “We were the same age, the same generation. We had a lot of friends in common.” At the end of the meeting, Connell broached a delicate topic. “Mike asked me, ‘How easy is it to destroy all records of e-mail?’ ” recalls Spoonamore. “He sort of gestured toward the White House and said, ‘Because I have clients down the street who are working on that problem.’ And I stepped back and said, ‘If you are talking about White House e-mail destruction, I want nothing to do with it.’ ”

A year later, at an IT conference in London, Spoonamore confronted the pro-life Connell about the Ohio election: “He said, ‘I’m afraid that in my zeal to save the babies, the system I built may have been abused.’ ”

For all its complications the theorized method is pretty straightforward. Basically, the results of vote are electronically hijacked, sent to a "friendly" server, manipulated to achieve the desired outcome, and then forwarded back to the official counting stations.

According to writers Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell hired Connell in 2004 to create a real-time computer data compilation for counting Ohio's votes. Under Connell's supervision, results from the Ohio Secretary of State election servers were suddenly re-routed to the GOP controlled servers at Smartech in the basement of the Old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga where the votes were flipped from Kerry to Bush.

At 12:20 am on the night of the 2004 election exit polls and initial vote counts showed John Kerry the clear winner of Ohio's presidential campaign. The Buckeye State's 20 electoral votes would have given Kerry the presidency.

But from then until around 2am, the flow of information mysteriously ceased. After that, the vote count shifted dramatically to George W. Bush, ultimately giving him a second term. In the end there was a 6.7 percent diversion---in Bush's favor---between highly professional, nationally funded exit polls and the final official vote count as tabulated by Blackwell and Connell.

Between Theory and Evidence

It is no exaggeration to say that Ohio was a key component in the 2004 presidential election. Had Bush lost Ohio or Florida, he in turn would have lost his 286-252 edge in the Electoral College and would have gone down in defeat.

According to Writer Micheal Parenti in his article, The Stolen Presidential Elections, in Florida alone, independent investigations would later reveal serious irregularities directed mostly against ethnic minorities and low-income residents who generally voted heavily Democratic. But then there were a lot of suspicious and serious problems with the way the election was run.

Parenti lists a few of them:

Under orders from Governor Jeb Bush …state troopers near polling sites delayed people for hours while searching their cars. Some precincts required two photo IDs which many citizens do not have. The requirement under Florida law was only one photo ID. Passed just before the election, this law itself posed a special difficulty for low-income or elderly voters who did not have drivers licenses or other photo IDs. Uncounted ballot boxes went missing or were found in unexplained places or were never collected from certain African-American precincts. During the recount, GOP agitators shipped in from Washington D.C. by the Republican national leadership stormed the Dale County Canvassing Board, punched and kicked one of the officials, shouted and banged on their office doors, and generally created a climate of intimidation that caused the board to abandon its recount and accept the dubious pro-Bush tally.

The Ohio investigation, involving the suspicions that results from that state had been re-routed and altered, had been stymied by the lack of solid evidence. It is easy enough to theorize but what was actually needed was testimony from an insider. That insider was to be Mike Connell.

According to Simon Worall's article, it was Stephen Spoonamore who encouraged Connell to come clean. To Spoonamore, it was obvious that Connell was having pangs of conscience.

Three days later, in the back of a cab heading toward the airport, Spoonamore asked Connell if he would be willing to talk to a Congressional judiciary committee about what he knew.

“I actually took Mike’s hand and said, ‘If I can arrange for a private meeting for you to sit down with the committee and explain what you think may have happened in 2004 and how your systems may have been abused, will you do it?’

And he said, ‘Yes.’ ”

The problem was, of course, bringing him to the courts to testify.

Here is part of an interesting interview conducted by Velvet Revolution with Spoonamore, in which he shares his ideas about American politics and the problems. (It was recorded about the time of the events we are discussing- last 2008.)

---

In Part 2, I will continue with the Connell story, the lawsuit he became embroiled in and what followed.

To Re-tweet this blog post: http://twitter.com/#!/ANomadicView/status/61372861385936896