More on the suspicious death of Mike Connell

The mainstream media deserves a toxic lump of coal in their collective stocking this year for their atrocious lack of coverage regarding the suspicious death of Republican IT guru Mike Connell last weekend.

Connell died when his plane went down near the Canton/Akron airport in Ohio on Friday night. The indie media has been ablaze with stories about how circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Connell's plane was sabotaged in order to stop him from whistle blowing about vote fraud efforts by the Republican Party, particularly in regards to Ohio's pivotal vote in the 2004 presidential election.

CBS finally ran a story yesterday, but CNN, the Washington Post and New York Times continue their blackout. Their silence is yet another deafening indictment of how the mainstream media appears to have a gate-keeper that works to suppress information that would threaten the status quo powers-that-be. "All the news that's fit to print," New York Times?

Investigative reporter and NYU media studies professor Mark Crispin Miller has been one of the leading voices on this story. He appeared on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now radio program to discuss on Monday and has been updating his blog with further intriguing insights. An excerpt from Democracy Now:

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, I cannot assert with perfect confidence that this was no accident, but I will say that the circumstances are so suspicious and so convenient for Rove and the White House that I think we're obliged to investigate this thing very, very thoroughly. And that means, first of all, taking a close look at some of the stories that were immediately circulated to account for what happened, that it was bad weather. That was the line they used when Wellstone's plane went down. There had been bad weather, but it had passed two hours before. And this comes from a woman at the airport information desk in Akron. We're told that his plane was running out of gas, which is a little bit odd for a highly experienced pilot like Connell, but apparently, when the plane went down, there was an explosion, a fireball that actually charred and pocked some of the house fronts in the neighborhood. People can go online and see the footage that news crews took. But beyond the, you know, dubiousness of the official story, we have to take a close look atâ??and a serious look at all the charges that Connell was set to make.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, he had asked the Attorney General Mukasey for protective custody, because of threats to him and his wife?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: He reported threats to his lawyer, Cliff Arnebeck, and Arnebeckâ??also, Velvet Revolution heard from tipsters, as well, tipsters who also claimed that Connell's life was at risk. Stephen Spoonamore, the whistleblower who was the firstâ??who was the one to name Connell in the first place, also had an ear to the inside. He's also very connected. And all these people were saying Rove is making threats, the White House is very worried about this case.

Having heard all this, Arnebeck contacted Mukasey, he contacted Nancy Rogers, who is the Ohio Attorney General, and he wrote a letter to the court, telling all of them that “This man should be in protective custody. He is an important witness in a RICO case. Please do something to look after him.” And they didn't respond to this.

Miller has done some further blogging on the matter, in which more disturbing details continue to come to light. This post notes evidence uncovered by Raw Story to indicate that it would appear someone fed the Akron Beacon Journal some disinformation about the weather at the time of the crash::

Media blackout on Connell's death
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2008/12/media-blackout-on-connells-death.html

Also, here's John Byrne, of RAW STORY, on Randy Cole's dismissal of suggestions of foul play in Connell's death. Cole is former president of Connell's company, GovTech solutions:

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/President_of_GOP_IT_gurus_firm_1223.html

The piece includes a paragraph on the weather in Akron on the night of Connell's fatal crash:

“RAW STORY was able to secure the weather data from the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) in Ashville, North Caroline. (Available here, with legend for interpreting data here). For the crash event time window between 5:35PM and approximately 6PM EST, visibility was 9-10 miles in broken cloud cover and temperatures hovered just above freezing, contradicting the 1 mile claim in the Akron Beacon Journal.”

Then there's some funny business from the NY Times regarding a press release from Velvet Revolution about the story:
NYTimes posts, then drops, then posts VR's press release on Connell
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2008/12/nytimes-posts-then-drops-then-posts-vrs-press-release-on-connell.html

Still no coverage of their own from NYTimes though. Further coverage comes from Brad Friedman, another acclaimed investigative reporter and staunch election protection advocate. See:


Finally, further insight comes from Columbus-based investigative reporter Bob Fitrakis and partner Harvey Wasserman in the Columbus Free Press. See:

Why Al Franken should NOT be riding private planes
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
December 23, 2008
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2008/3322

The tragic and suspicious death of Karl Rove's election thief in chief should send a clear message to Al Franken and other key liberals: don't be riding in any small private planes.

Death by air crash now seems to be the favored means of ridding the Rovian right of troublesome characters.

The most recent is Michael Connell, who died Friday night when his private plane crashed near his northern Ohio home. Connell was the information techology whiz kid who helped Rove steal the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, along with a few in between---possibly including the 2002 senatorial campaign in Minnesota that followed the death of Paul Wellstone.

Connell was an expert pilot whose plane crashed in clear weather. He held virtually all the secrets to how George W. Bush was illegally foisted on the American people---and the world---for eight horrifying years. By manipulating computerized results in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 Connell made history. By some accounts, he was about to tell the attorneys in the on-going King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit how he did it. He also approached expressed a willingness to appear under oath before Congress. But now he is dead.

Current cover stories include the possibility that his plane ran out of fuel. But its crash was accompanied by a very large fireball explosion that burned for more than ten minutes. A trooper on the scene immediately identified Connell, but newspaper accounts say his body was charred beyond recognition.