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From Protester to Senator, FBI Tracked Paul Wellstone
It started with a fingerprint of a 25-year-old college professor who opposed the Vietnam War and ended with a search for his remains, 32 years later, in a wooded area near Eveleth, Minn.
Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and his wife Sheila jog to their campaign bus after casting their ballots in their hometown of Northfield, Minn., Tuesday morning, Nov. 6, 1990. Wellstone defeated Sen. Rudy Boschwitz in the general election. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
The FBI's files on Paul and Sheila Wellstone, many of which are being
made public for the first time, shed new light on the extent of the
relationship between the FBI and the political activist who would go on
to become a U.S. senator from Minnesota.
Some of the information uncovered in the 219 pages was new to one of his closest confidantes, former Wellstone campaign manager and state director Jeff Blodgett.
The files show that although the FBI initially took interest in Wellstone as part of the broader surveillance of the American left, the agency later served as his protector, investigating death threats the freshman senator received for his views on the first Gulf War, and, in the end, helping sift through the wreckage of the fatal plane crash that killed Wellstone and seven others eight years ago.
Read the rest of this article here.The entire FBI report can found on the Minnesota Public Radio's website here.
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Show AllNot to mention Bush couldn't even be found by his campaign staff for about a 3 days stretch that coincided with the JFKJr hit.
Senator Paul Wellstone was, "the first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. Senate." In Senate Race 2002, the White House made defeating Wellstone priority #1. Karl Rove hand-picked arch Republican Norm Coleman to run against him. Despite massive funding, Coleman was trailing the popular Wellstone two weeks before election day.
Then, tragedy struck. On the morning of October 25th, 2002, Wellstone was killed after a mysterious communication cut-out and crash of his small aircraft. He died alongside his wife Sheila, their daughter Marcia, three staff members, and two pilots, while trying to land at Minnesota’s Eveleth airfield. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer insisted to his reporter at the scene that foul weather was the lethal factor in the crash, despite the statements to the contrary from the CNN correspondent. To this day, the public tends to blame the weather.
Ph.D. Professors James Fetzer and Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs present the harrowing truth. The plane was exceptionally airworthy. The weather didn’t bring down Senator Wellstone. Nor were the two pilots incompetent, as the report of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) would eventually claim.
The facts point elsewhere. The FBI arrived at the remote rural crash scene less than two hours after the crash. Could they have known about it in advance? The FBI forbade the ambulance and fire teams to take photos. Even the AP photographer on hand was intimidated, delayed and then highly monitored. For some reason, a member of the U.S. Capitol Police Dignitary Protection Division was also present.
Why did the FBI state that they were treating the site as a "crime scene" although there were "no indications of any criminal activity"? How could the FBI so very swiftly conclude and state publicly, before NTSB arrived, that there was "no evidence of terrorism" involved? Why did the NTSB search for a "black box" for a day and a half and then conclude that there hadn't been one, after all?
http://www.amazon.com/American-Assassination-Strange-Senator-Wellstone/dp/0975276301
The JFK Assassination and the Gangster Nature of the State
When Oliver Stone's movie JFK opened in December 1991 a huge PR campaign was mobilized against the film. Even progressives spoke out. Noam Chomsky wrote in support of the Warren Commission's findings. In contrast Michael Parenti gave one of his highly acclaimed talks criticizing the lone assassin theory.
The bitter questions that haunted defenders and critics alike was whether government agencies of a democratic country would do such a thing as assassinate an elected President.
In this talk Michael Parenti turns to that question first. He examines, in part one, what he calls "the gangster nature of the state". In part two he goes over details of the assassination and critiques The Nation, The Progressive, Chomsky and Cockburn. He spoke in Berkeley, CA, on the 30th anniversary of the JFK assassination.
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/22611
The 'good cop' nature of Cockburn always worries me. His allergy to the 911 truth movement is telling. I think he is on a leash and the feds can jerk it anytime they want to get him back in line.
What a strange article. It quotes Wellstone's campaign manager laughing off FBI surveillance. It cites death threats supposedly investigated by the FBI, but apparently no one was arrested. It depicts a "helpful" FBI sifting throught the plane wreckage, two hours after the crash.
Both the FBI surveillance and the sniper guy's letter demonstrated a shared interest in Wellstone for holding maintream antiwar views shared by the vast majority of Americans. Hmmm, what might that say about Constitutionally protected rights and the functioning (or lack thereof) of the republic?
What's to be concluded except (as people have noted here) that effective leaders tend to get killed in the United States? I guess the conclusion is that if you oppose U.S. wars, it is OK for the FBI to investigate you. Now that's a downright un-American and illegal concept (no probable cause, Fourth Amendment violation, rejection of representative government).
This article concludes on a very strange note - the FBI got to close their investigation of Wellstone with his death. So, antiwar views get you lifetime surveillance? If this is true, why don't the cowards codify it in published law?
Will there be no investigation of the FBI? This must be what is meant by "the banality of evil," which was said of a different milieu.
-TIA
"STAND UP: KEEP ON FIGHTING"....Senator Paul Wellstone
who's madeleine baran?
the release of the documents may be timed for reasons.
ususally, the reason is for maximum chilling effect.
who's gonna investigate FBI and CIA for their possible wrongdoing?
From rapper Immortal Technique;
"Just so conservatives don't take it to heart
I don't think Bush did it [9/11]'cause he isn't that smart
He's just a stupid puppet taking orders on his cell phone
From the same people that sabotaged Senator Wellstone
The military industry got it poppin and lockin
Lookin for a way to justify the Wolfowitz doctrine
And Rumsfeld as a matter of fact now that I think back
Without 9/11 you couldn't have a war in Iraq
Or a defense budget of world conquest proportions
Kill freedom of speech and revoke the right to abortion
Tax cut extortion a blessing to the wealthy and wicked
But you still have to answer to the armageddon you scripted
And Dick Cheney you f***in leech tell em your plans
About building pipelines through Afghanistan
And how Israeli troops trained the Taliban in Pakistan
You might have some house n*****s fooled but I understand
Colonialism is sponsored by corporations
That's why Halliburton gets paid to rebuild nations
Tell me the truth I don't scare into paralysis
I know the CIA saw bin-Laden on dialysis
In '98 when he was top ten for the FBI
Government ties is really why the government lies
Read it yourself instead of asking the government why
Then the cause of death will cause the propaganda to die"
You can believe that the deaths of a long list of Lions among the Sheep is all coincidence or you can choose to believe there is something more behind it all.
I do not believe in repeated and similar "coincidences".
Even with this mainstream US media account we have the FBI doing its best to harass those on the progressive end of the ideological spectrum and when some far right scum bags threaten his life, the FBI either refuses to arrest and the federal prosecutors refuse to prosecute. Just picture this happening if any right wing senator or congressperson got the same kind of threats, and you know the real deal in this country. The FBI is as I F Stone once said the "American Gestapo" and it hasn't changed at least at the top level. They are there to keep the "trouble makers" and "wave makers' under control and keep the overly wealth and over pampered power elites in power. That's the way hierarchies always function. Earnest Hemingway also considered the FBI fascist and said so. Eleanor Roosevelt made clear her attitude by comparing J Edgar Hoover to a top Nazi propagandist. The ideological bias of these people is outrageous and needs to be curbed sharply.
Eleanor Roosevelt specifically referred to the one time FBI director as J Edgar Goering, which really says it all, as Goering was a big name Nazi prosecuted and convicted at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal as well as sentenced to death for his part in the genocide against the Jews, Gypsies, and others.
For those tired of this hierarchy, we need to get a level playing field, and the fact that Paul Wellstone was moving too much in this direction is the reason the FBI targeted him. Picture the FBI targeting the Tea Party scum or those at the top level of that gang stirring up every kind of racial and political animosity, as we know that would never happen,
The building in Washington Deceit that is named after J. Edgar Hoover is a travesty and insult to MLK ( who was branded and demonized as a communist by Hoover ) and many others. If it was honest, it would be named what Eleanor Roosevelt called Hoover: The J. Edgar Goring Building and the home of the Fascist Boys Institute. Folks, do you ever wonder why all the assassinations and mysterious deaths of the left, like Wellstone, over the last 50 years and up to 911; are after SO CALLED exhaustive and extensive study, ALWAYS TURN OUT THE GOVERNMENTS WAY SO THEY ARE ALWAYS INNOCENT. Gosh, the fact that would happen in every instance, you would think the odds would be at least a million to one!
FBI, Fascist Boys Institute.
FBI, Fascist Boys Institute.
Just because the FBI knew of threats, should not lead people to believe they felt obligated to follow up on them. Consider the case of Luis Posada Carriles, the man behind the bombing of a Cuban civil airplane in 1976, trained by the CIA. Though he is in the US, there is no one putting him on trial for the bombing. He will likely get off on an immigration law case to put the Luis Posada Carriles business to rest. Why don't airline pilots care about this bomber?
Wellstone was a great man - and I can't help but believe he was killed in a similar way as Michael Connell most likely was. Connell was the computer guru of the Bush campaign who was subpoenaed to testify about possible vote-rigging in Ohio. Needless to say, he didn't get a chance to testify. An anonymous letter said that a microprocessor AMD chip was put on this engine the previous day. See these links
http://www.maxim.com/humor/stupid-fun/86265/mysterious-death-bushs-cyber-guru.html
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/12-mysterious-death-of-mike-connell—karl-roves-election-thief/