When two military medical examiners, Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell and U.S. Army Lt. Col. David Hause, asserted that a suspicious skull wound of the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was the result of a .45 caliber gun, and not from the impact of a plane crash, this should have been the biggest news story of the closing month of 1997. This revelation is nothing less than shocking, and logically it should have piqued the interest of America's major newsmakers. Instead, President Clinton's new canine friend Buddy and his Christmas shopping spree with Chelsea at Union Station pathetically proved to be more worthy headlines. Why the winter blackout?
Not since Secretary of Defense James Forrestal plummeted out of a 16th story window at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda nearly 50 years ago has a prominent presidential Cabinet Secretary died under such mysterious circumstances. And while 1949 officialdom in Washington footnoted Forrestal to irrelevance, no one is about to forget Ron Brown. Not today.
This explosive information forces one to ask serious questions which cannot be dismissed by government authorities as conspiracy lore. There are important questions which need to asked and which address the events surrounding the fateful April 1996 plane crash in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where Brown and 34 others apparently perished. And there are critical questions which expose discrepancies in the official Air Force investigation of the crash and deserve to be answered.
With these troubling questions, along with Cols. Cogswell's and Hause's declarations, it is not far-fetched to theorize that Brown and his entourage were possible victims of a planned accident, and that Brown, a possible survivor, may have been shot. Frankly, it is not premature nor irresponsible to surmise such a possibility in light of the shocking information already known. However, if there is another explanation to support or quash such a theory, then a congressional or independent investigation is in order. Already, Rep. Maxine Waters and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have called for an official inquiry.
Whatever tragically transpired on that April day in Croatia, only a proper investigation will tell us. The truth needs to be told----for the sake of the victims' family and for the American people.