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.

• What caused the plane to veer so far off course? The Air Force blames pilot error. However, both pilots were well-experienced and the plane was well-maintained with no mechanical problems.
• Did the outdated non-directional beacon (NDB) at Dubrovnik Airport play a role? Due to the cloudy weather that day, the pilots were reliant upon this beacon for landing. Strangely, Niko Jerkuic, the chief maintenance officer in charge of the beacon, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot three days after the crash and only moments before he was to be interviewed by Air Force investigators. Mr. Jerkuic's family and colleagues do not believe he committed suicide.
• Was the landing manual doctored? The manual, made by Jeppesen-Sanderson, Inc., details precise procedures for assisting pilots on landing approach at Dubrovnik. Jeppesen is currently facing civil legal action for negligence by the victims' families. However, the Air Force acknowledges that this manual was removed from the mishap aircraft the night before and hand-delivered to the pilots who were staying at a hotel in Zagreb.
• Were a “black box” and other critical items removed from the wreckage? The Air Force maintains that Brown's CT-43A aircraft was not equipped with a flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder, automatic direction finding receiver, nor a global positioning system. It begs the imagination to believe that this particular plane, which only weeks before shuttled around Hillary Clinton and former Defense Secretary William Perry, would not be equipped with these vital avionics instruments.
• What happened to Shelly Kelly, a flight attendant who survived the crash? Who carried her away from the crash site? And who arrived first at the scene----Croatian or American military personnel? According to the Air Force, Ms. Kelly was the “lone survivor” taken to a local hospital by the Croatians, but died en route from a broken neck sustained in the crash. Independent reports, though, say she was airlifted by a U.S. military helicopter and bled to death from a cut to her main femoral artery.

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.