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The Intriguing Death Of Top GOP Consultant Michael Connell
At 3:31 PM Friday, December 19, Michael L. Connell, a top Internet consultant for the Republican National Committee and for the Bush and McCain presidential campaigns, left Washington from the small airport in College Park, Md. Alone at the helm of a single engine Piper Saratoga, Connell's flight plan anticipated arrival at his hometown Akron-Canton Airport in a little over two hours, at 5:43 PM.
Michael Connell, 45, shown here in a 2000 photo, died in a fiery plane crash last Friday. (Plain Dealer file) Instead, about three miles short of the Akron-Canton Airport, Connell's plane crashed to the ground in an upscale section of Lake Township, killing Connell instantly. "I was standing in the kitchen and I looked out the window and all I saw was fire," Taylor Fano told The Akron Beacon Journal. "It took out the flagpole and the cement blocks surrounding the flagpole . . . . It skidded across the driveway and right in-between a line of pine trees and a small fence around an in-ground pool."
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the accident and has not yet filed a report, but there was no immediate evidence of wrong-doing or sabotage.
Nonetheless, Connell's death provoked a groundswell of commentary among conspiracy theorists on the web, including Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story, Velvet Revolution, ePluribus Media, and TheZoo.
The most common unsubstantiated allegation on these sites is that Connell was about to provide crucial information in the case of alleged vote fraud in the 2004 Ohio presidential contest, and that that information would implicate Karl Rove and others in the Bush administration. Just last month, Connell was deposed in the ongoing case, King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell. According to accounts of the November 3rd deposition, Connell denied any knowledge of attempts to fraudulently manipulate 2004 Ohio vote counts.
There is, however, a more immediate and relevant question: How much will Connell's death, even if the accident was entirely without malfeasance, impede congressional committee investigations into the more controversial activities of the Bush administration over the past eight years - including the ongoing investigation into thousands of missing White House-RNC emails sent and received by some 22 White House political aides, including Rove. These emails are believed likely to shed light on the political firings of U.S. Attorneys, and to show if the White House had any role in controversial decisions to prosecute former Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman.
After first emerging as a web consultant during the 1998 gubernatorial campaign of Jeb Bush, Connell quickly became a key member of the Republican brain trust and quickly became part of a small network of political consultants and lobbyists favored by Rove. He advised both Bush-Cheney campaigns, and was a regular consultant to the RNC and other GOP committees.
Connell, and his firms - New Media Communications, Govtech and Connell Donatelli Inc. - were part of a universe that included such other GOP operatives as Tony Feather and Jeff Larson of FLS Connect, Tom Synhorst of the DCI Group, and Jeff Averbeck of Smartech. Their companies have received millions of dollars from the Bush-Cheney campaign committees of 2000 and 2004 from the three major - national, congressional and senatorial - Republican Party committees; from such conservative interest groups as the National Rifle Association and Citizens Against Government Waste; from a host of corporations and trade associations seeking to remain in the administration's good graces; and from dozens and dozens of Republican House and Senate campaigns.
Two of Connell's firms received at least $8.78 million from the RNC from 2004 to 2008 and from the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. FLS got $39.5 million between 2004 and 2008 from the RNC alone, and Smartech got $9.74 million from the RNC over the same period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
These revenue reports only touch the surface. Before his death, Connell's New Media listed 90 clients on its web site from the Alabama Republican Party to the Business Roundtable to the Free Enterprise Fund, to the Republican Jewish Coalition to USAID. The scope of Connell's client list is a reflection of the Midas touch of the Bush administration in signaling to prospective clients which firms were in good stead.
As it stands now, whatever Connell knew about the activities of Karl Rove and other Republican operatives will go with him to his grave at St. Hilary Catholic Church in Fairlawn, Ohio. His family released a statement on the New Media web site declaring, "Mike was a devoted husband and father, who, with his wife of 18 years, raised a family of four wonderful children. Mike was also a committed man of faith, who regularly worshipped with his family at St. Hillary's and who lived his faith through mission work to help the poor and less fortunate at home and around the world. Finally, Mike was an engaged citizen, who was actively involved at all levels of our political system."
In a telephone interview, Connell's wife Heather adamantly declared "he was a good man. He did nothing wrong. He wasn't about to talk, because there was nothing to talk about. Nobody did anything wrong. We won the elction fair and square. Deal with it." Asked if he ever spoke about the disputed emails, Heather Connell said "I have no clue about that. I just know it's not him."
A close friend who worked extensively with Connell in Republican politics said, however, that he believes Connell "was more involved in that than a lot of people were let to believe." This associate of Connell's, who first brought the accident to the attention of the Huffington Post, said Connell, who was deeply religious and firmly pro-life, may have been "developing second thoughts" after years of being convinced that "working for the Republican cause was doing God's work."
24 Comments so far
Show AllShow's over!
Nothing to see here!
Move along, now!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Let's see if we can put two and two together..........
When the Corporate/Political Elite feel threatened by "Whistleblowers" or "Damaging Testimony" or "When They Need a Patsy" funny things happen: suicides, single car accidents, plane accidents, assassinations through the use of poison, or bribary.
Michael Connell could have testified about his relationships with Rove and Cheney and the money that was being funnelled his way.
A funny thing happened to the Minister of Interior of Mexico, a man responsible for fighting the Narcotics Trade.....His plane went down suddenly in Mexico City near the airport. The claim was made that the accident was caused by "Pilot error"...Here was a man who had to investigate two planes that went down with over 8 tons of cocaine in Northern Mexico.......The last plane that went down in September 2007 with 3.3 tons of cocaine had made 4 CIA rendition flights to Guantanamo from Afghanistan (Under investigation by the European Union) and was owned by a "Ghost Company" in the United States. There was no FBI investigation and no one from the states punished.....the other plane was also owned by a "Ghost Company" with no FBI investigation.
A funny thing about planes, Raytheon is one of the prime movers of "Pilotless Planes" They even practiced with a 747 before 9/11. They took off, flew, and landed that 747 without a pilot. (Andreas Von Bulow, former German Minister of Defense and author of "La CIA y 11 de Septiembre") Yes, they could control planes without the knowledge of pilots.
So, when two people, who know too much, are killed in small planes that all of a sudden nose dive and crash near airports, I ask, "Is it possible that Raytheon's equipment was involved?" The same with those single car accidents. There is no longer an independent agency able to do an independent investigation. The United States has had a politicized Department of Justice with a politicized FBI for eight years.......Bruce Ivins was made a "Patsy" and then became a questionable suicide.
Pamela Palfrey swore that she would get those bas_ _ _ _s. I do not think that she would have hung herself without a profound letter naming names. Also the other prostitute who hung herself had no suicide note either.(When the D.C Madam Story broke, Dick Cheney, as Halliburton Director, was alleged to have used the service,but that story died quickly.) No, you can go into the mysterious deaths of eyewitnesses to the explosions in World Trade Center #7. The mysterious deaths of microbiologists who worked with Anthrax, mysterious deaths of CIA people and the mysterious suicide of the DOD Employee who was paid by a British Foundation.
There is just too much wrong with the way the "Corporate/Political Elite" control the information and investigations of mysterious deaths.
Sioux Rose
Although it has every indication of "The man who knew too much," subtitled, "You'll never get out of here alive," since he was deep into the Republican machine and may or may not helped Bush gain office, perhaps on the soul level he opted to burn some karma now, by not seeing his children raised into adulthood. How many Iraqis now share that fate? Would that have been so had the election proceeded in a more natural manner, and the Supreme Court not given to the world a duo capable of one thing above all others: massacre on a grand scale.
His wife sounds like a real sweetheart. Deal with it? Maybe it's her grief.
Well said sister SiouxRose. My statement would be to the line "he believed he was doing Gods work"-------I personally would worry about a 'God' that needs so much help from human beings---especially those who fly in machines that are designed not to withstand a crash. But then there are most likely the "faithful" who would argue that "the lord just called him home".
Then another might argue that this is "Karma", if he was such a "huge help" to the GOP, how much blood do they have on their hands?
Then perhaps the absolute mockery of logic "he was deeply pro life" and then supported the Bush administration in no less than two illegal wars of aggression, where the majority of the "con-life" (as opposed to pro) were called "collateral damage"------I am sure that "God" approved of those deaths as necessary----you know, for progress, and "democracy'----and the "American Way"
Like 50 million Naive Peoples (collateral damage) in a few hundred years time----
Why anyone would morn the death of one who took pride in helping to spread so much of it around is beyond my ability to comprehend.
Good luck America, you really need it.
Sioux Rose
NATIVE SON: Thank you for the acknowledgement. Perhaps you can tell from the name I use as a writer, that I feel a very strong spiritual kinship with the American Indigenous. Thank you for all the time you devote to the forum to remind us of the larger version of America's beginnings, and trajectory (based on this legacy).
Thank you for all of the wisdom you share on this forum. And for the acknowledgement of our people and our struggle. And thanks for no using the idiotic term "indians"-------since none of us came from India.
America, you would not need so much "good luck" if you had more like this writer, and the intelligence expressed in her words.
Sioux Rose
NATIVE SON: I feel honored that you have acknowledged me for the Unity I sincerely try to teach. Please understand that is not the same as advocating a free pass to any who trespass, but perhaps you remember that I am an advocate of Universal justice which I believe takes shape (over the long arc of time) through the law of karma. It would seem the ravaged state of America today under politicians who possess no ideals is likely the blowback for acts of wonton aggression. In our own national anthem, "America, America, GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE...." the realization of the incredible abundance of this land, might have led to better ways to share in the bounty. I apologize on behalf of all those too ignorant to recognize how they have done harm, and for those awakening, forgiveness asks that there be a reckoning (much like those powerful Councils on Truth and Reconciliation faciliated in S. Africa) that the ugliness of yesterday NEVER AGAIN be perpetrated on any people, or sentient life forms (except where absolutely necessary. And this case I raise with respect to our human food patterns. I always felt respect towards the ideas of thanking Great Spirit for the food one takes in, even if it required that an animal give up its life.)
Blessings to you.
Sioux Rose: "His wife sounds like a real sweetheart. Deal with it? Maybe it's her grief."
I noticed that, too, Sioux Rose. Sometimes denials of guilt are just too broad and definite to be credible: "He did nothing wrong. He wasn't about to talk, because there was nothing to talk about. Nobody did anything wrong. We won the election fair and square. Deal with it." It's like she was reading talking points off a card. "Nobody did anything wrong"? How could she possibly know that?
Either Mrs. Connell was in on the deal, or else she's, understandably, scared out of her wits, because this is the kind of blanket statement only a collaborator or a tortured prisoner would make.
Yep, Obe,
It's remarkable how key players that are a threat to the industrial war machine frequently develop fatal problems with their airplanes....
Just a couple of others that come to mind:
In 1996 Ron Brown, chairman of the DNC crashes in a C-130 days before he was to testify against the war in Kosavo. (reportedly found with a 45 hole in his head; no autopsy though; move along!)
Dem Sen Paul Wellstone fatally crashed in his perfectly normal airplane giving the Repukes 50-49 control in the senate to vote for invasion in 2002. (Move along! Nothing to see here!)
JFK Jr, Sen John Heinz, penn. others? Just multi-millionaires with fancy state-of-the-art aircraft falling out the sky for no decernable reason....
What? no mechanical failure found? Must be the weather then....
But never mind airplanes; just opening your mail can be risky in this country if you oppose the chicken hawks:
Dems Tom Daschle and Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, were targeted for assassination with letters laced with anthrax. But the Repub attorney general John Ashcroft never could figure out who did it...
Then there's NFL football hero Tillman who was ready to testify against the Army's attrocities.... whoops: died of U.S. lead posioning a few weeks earlier (lead posioning in the back; apparently a pretty common disorder in Iraq prior to testimony.)
But it's all just a bunch of conspiracy theories according to the neo-con owned press. The motive of billions of Haliburton dollars couldn't possibly have anything to do with it..... nooooo.
Others? Hale Boggs comes to mind.
Not to mention:
Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly, Rocky Marciano, Marcel Cerdan, John Denver, Bill Graham, Richie Vallens, Will Rogers, the Big Bopper, Wally Post, Glen Miller, Amelia Erhart, and so many others too numerous to mention. All in regular airplanes, too.
Threats to the Big Combine, one and all.
ByeMonkeyBush December 26th, 2008 6:15 pm, it's strange that the Big Media will give full coverage to a federal prosecution for conspiracy (RICO, etcetera) involving millions of dollars and every motive and movement of the defendants will be scrutinized and analyzed, but when it comes to billions of dollars and governmental power, it's always denigrated as some ridiculous 'conspiracy theory' not worth their time.
We still have no answers as to why so many eyewitnesses to, and fringe participants in, the JFK assassination ended up dead under often mysterious cicumstances, such as karate chopped to death or untimely suicide with a blow to the back of the head. The odds of all of these people, many of them healthy and in the prime of life, dying within a decade of Kennedy's killing was nine billion to one, yet no major media outlet in this country found that worthy of investigation. (Not to mention, but I will, the strange demise of columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, shortly after she vowed she had proof that would blow the top off of the JFK murder.)
Thanks for that list, BTW, and it might also be remembered that Paul Wellstone was warned by Cheney to stop opposing the inevitable coming war with Iraq. Wellstone didn't listen.
Hey, why leave out Payne Stewart?
Now, THAT was a creepy one!
· Yr Obd't Servant
But he was just a golfer.
That's what they'd like you to BELIEVE!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Thank God these guys don't ride Amtrak, we'd have whole trains crashing.
Or take United, we'd have 747's nosediving into the cement.
Couldn't Cheney sub-contract this to the Mafia? This plane thing seems a little over the top.
Or just change up, CAR wreck, fake suicide, induced heart attack, disappears, plane crash, repeat. Shoot, us dumb conspiracy theorists would NEVER catch on.
Connell, and his firms - New Media Communications, Govtech and Connell Donatelli Inc. - were part of a universe that included such other GOP operatives as Tony Feather and Jeff Larson of FLS Connect, Tom Synhorst of the DCI Group, and Jeff Averbeck of Smartech.
If I were any of these people and I had a hand in fixing the election in Ohio in '04, I'd sleep under my bed for a while . . . a long while.
I think this Huff Post writer, Thomas Edsall, is being intellectually dishonest in dismissing Larisa Alexandrovna--as excellent an investigative reporter as anyone on the web--with that all too tiresome tarbrush of "conspiracy theorist," especially since Alexandrovna has been working on Spoonamore, Connell, and the 2004 Ohio election fraud far longer than johnny-come-latelies like Edsall and knows far more about the merits of the case than all the mainstream kneejerk believers in "accidents" that always seem to benefit the gangsters in power and always seem to befall potentially damaging witnesses. Carefully omitted by Edsall is also Alexandrovna's own disclaimer that, not knowing as yet all the available facts of Connell's crash, she is reluctant to issue any "theory" or personal opinion regarding the cause of said crash. Like a good reporter, she sticks only to the facts she herself has thus far gathered, and they are interesting indeed. Here is a bit of what she has had to say:
"I have been to Mr. Connell's home. Mr. Connell has confided that he was being threatened, something that his attorneys also told the judge in the Ohio election fraud case. When I met with Heather, his wife, I did so carefully because of the threats he was getting." (cf. http://www.atlargely.com/2008/12/one-of-my-sources-died-in-a-plane-crash-last-night.html)
Now, surely this bit of information is not irrelevant to the case, and could have been mentioned by Mr Edsall, perhaps with a self-exonerating intro along the lines of "Ms Alexandrovna claims that..."? Why, Mr Edsall could have even asked Mrs Connell himself if these claims were true when he called her, couldn't he? Because, if Mrs Connell denied them, that would be more grist for his anti-conspiracy mill, no? On the other hand, if Connell's attorneys also told the judge in the election fraud case that their client was being threatened, then it's even on the public record! Newsworthy, no? But not a whisper of any of this from Edsall. What we get instead is a pretense at journalism that rushes for cover into the red herring of all the Republican money in Connell's well-filled coffers, an interesting angle in itself, but irrelevant to the immediate cause of death.
Good points, clovis December 27th, 2008 6:36 pm, and I heard one of the attorneys in the Ohio lawsuit on AAR last week confirm that Connell had told him, as well as Alexandrovna, that Connell had been threatened to keep quiet, and that he planned to 'come clean' soon.
Also curious is the determination the plane crashed because it ran out of gas, yet it exploded in a fireball, of the kind caused by fuel in the tanks. One other thing: The state trooper who arrived at the crash site immediately identified Mike Connell's body, although he had never met him before. How do you immediately identify a charred body unless you already know who it is supposed to be?
In fairness to Edsall, he published an update to his piece, as follows:
"An earlier version of this story claimed: "Connell's death provoked a groundswell of commentary among conspiracy theorists on the web, including Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story, Velvet Revolution, ePluribus Media, and TheZoo."
To be fair: Larisa Alexandrovna acknowledged that suspicions that Connell's death was the result of sabotage were unproven, and she urged that empirical evidence be pursued. Her articles and those that she cites and legitimately raised questions that in many cases are worthy of pursuit (See Alexandrovna's letter concerning this story here.) I regret using "conspiracy theorists" to describe Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story, and the others."
But this still doesn't excuse Edsall's (continued) omission of the fact that Connell said he had been threatened.
Bring America Back !!!! I would like to defer to the post of herbert r chersonsky at dec 26 5:42 pm.
Chersonsky has his facts in order like the ducks on the pond. Great blog !
Where the Bush dynasty is involved, they could write a group book entitled:
"Death is My Shadow". Matter of fact, didn't someone make a flick called
'Death Is My Co-Pilot' ===which is too Ironic to even comment upon in this
instant case.
Say now, I heard a great conspiracy story: it seems a cave dwelling boogieman, and 19 of his martyrdom bound airline school flunkouts pulled off a scheme of
flying 4 jumbo jets into buildings in the USA ! To do this, the cave science
technology was developed and perfected by Barney Flintstone himself !!
***As Ripleys says: Believe it , OR NOT !!!!
Barney FLINTSTONE?
So THAT'S why they never found him in the Rubble!
· Yr Obd't Servant
There is a good book about the death/murder of Paul Wellstone, written by Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) & James H. Fetzer. The book is called "American assassination : the strange death of Senator Paul Wellstone." The book didn't receive much publicity, but the authors give a very convincing argument to support their case that this was not an accident.
What happened to wellstone had a chilling effect on the rest of congress to go along with business as usual...
Whoever wasn't in on it has been bought off or honey trapped or compromised or blackmailed...
Those who can't be co-opted conveniently get killed in an accident...