The mysterious deaths of protagonists in the robbery of presidential elections
A
preview of Project Censored II: The mysterious deaths of protagonists
in the robbery of the presidential elections in Ohio 2004 and Florida
2000
By
Ernesto Carmona Read Spanish Version
From
ARGENPRESS.info
The
research for the annual rankings of Project Censored 2009/2010 at
California State University at Sonoma brought to light the strange
death in a plane crash of Mike Connell in late 2008, as he prepared
to testify in the investigation into claims of manipulation of the
voting machines in Ohio, which gave Bush his "reelection"
in 2004, in remarkable contradiction with the results of exit polls.
News
of the death of that key witness, which the media overlooked because
of the world economic crisis and the impact of Obama’s triumph, has
been linked with the "suicide" of Raymond Lemme, the
protagonist in another investigation for voting-machine tampering in
Florida in 2000. In July 2003, Lemme was found dead — "a
suicide" — in a motel in Valdosta, Ga., quite a distance from
his home.
Connell’s
death is among the 67 finalists for the annual compendium that the
judges of Project Censored 2009/2010 weigh to reduce them to 25
important news. It is still unknown if this "finalist" news
item will classify among the 25 "top news stories" for
2009/2010, but the annual Censored report has always been
tremendously "newsy" — since 1976 — even though only once
a year it brings out of obscurity big news that the press hid from
the citizens of the United States and the whole world.
Connell
was an important figure in the Republican Party, a news and Internet
guru, and a member of Bush’s most intimate entourage, very close to
Karl Rove, the presidential adviser who had to leave the White House
in August 2007 after it was proven that he leaked to New York Times
reporter Judith Miller the information that Valerie Plame was a CIA
agent, to discredit her husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson, who had
unmasked Bush’s assertions about the alleged possession of nuclear
and chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in order to justify his
invasion of Iraq in 2002. ("To unmask" a CIA secret agent
is a grave crime in the U.S. Rove also was responsible for
articulating the removal from judicial power of eight federal
prosecutors, all Democrats, in 2006.)
Connell
died when the private plane he piloted — no one else was aboard —
crashed into a residential area in Lake Township, Ohio, on the
evening of Dec. 19. He was returning from Washington, whereto he
traveled for unknown reasons, and was approaching his home when his
single-engine plane crashed, barely 5 kilometers from the Akron,
Ohio, airport. The cause of the crash is unknown. Connell was a
Republican of those called (in political parlance) "GOPers,"
for staunch members of the Grand Old Party. The GOP ideology favors
the reduction in size and role of the state, opposes government
control of megacorporations, banks and the fortunes of the economic
right, in other words, all the dogmas exalted by Bush’s
administration.
The
relevance of the ill-fated aviator lies in the fact that he was the
central figure in a complex diagram that allowed the electronic shift
— with one click — of thousands of votes that defined the
Republican "victory" in 2004. Connell, who was Karl Rove’s
top aide and created websites for the campaigns of Bush and McCain,
was considered to be the highest Republican strategist in computing
and the Internet. But the most relevant fact is that he was a key
witness in the investigation triggered by the charges of electronic
vote fraud in 2004. On Nov. 3, on the eve of the elections that gave
the victory to Barack Obama, by court order, he delivered a statement
to prosecutors Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis about his actions
during the vote recount in Ohio, his access to Karl Rove’s e-mail
files and the mysterious disappearance of those files.
During
the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004, Connell received $800,000 but,
despite his status as an elite Republican consultant, he had to
testify as a witness in the federal conspiracy case labeled
"King-Lincoln Bronzville vs. Ohio Secretary of State,"
dealing with claims of voting-machine tampering. To lawyer Arnebeck,
Connell was a key witness, who also delivered proof that he was
threatened by Karl Rove, who warned him that his wife Heather "would
soon lose" a court case for alleged violation of the lobbying
laws. "He was a critically important witness. His loss damages
our case," said the jurist, who had requested protection for the
witness and his family in view of Rove’s intimidation, the man whom
Bush called "the architect" of his 2004 victory and
nicknamed "the Supergifted Kid" and "Dung Flower."
"Our previous petition for protection for Cornell was ignored
and now he is dead," the lawyer said. The trial will go on, but
without this important witness.
The
lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Ohio case said that Connell placed
his elevated IQ at the service of electoral trickery from Florida
2000 to Ohio 2004. Academician Mark Crispin Miller of New York
University said: "He seems to have been present at every
questionable election in the past eight years. We’re talking about
Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, Alabama in 2002. He seems to have been
implicated in vote stealing in the reelection of Don Siegelman for
governor [of Alabama]. There is evidence that links him to the run
for the Senate by Saxby Chambliss [a Republican] to the detriment of
Max Cleland [a Democrat] in Georgia in 2002. Being a technological
guru for Karl Rove apparently meant creating tricks that could shift
votes electronically, to the disadvantage of the Democrats and the
advantage of the Republicans."
In
late September 2008, the federal judge in charge of the case in Ohio
decided to go ahead with the lawsuit and in late October forced
Connell to testify before the attorneys for the plaintiffs, on
Monday, Nov. 3, the eve of the presidential election. Before his
final flight, Connell had received a summons to appear before federal
court in College Park, Ohio, very near the place where his plane
crashed.
Similarities
with the Lemme case
Raymond
Lemme, whose death in a Valdosta, Ga., motel in July 2003 was not
reported by the media, had key information about the Republican plans
to "win" Bush’s reelection in 2004, a "victory"
that still contains many unsolved mysteries.
This
story begins in October 2000, when electronics specialist Clint
Curtis — a full-blooded Republican — worked at Yang Enterprises
Inc. (YEI) in Florida. According to his sworn testimony before the
House Judiciary Committee in December 2004, Curtis acknowledged that,
while working for YEI, he prepared a prototype of a computer program
that transferred the votes in Florida from one candidate to another.
He declared he did that work in October 2000 at the request of
Florida legislator Tom Feeney, a Republican, who convinced Curtis
that Feeney’s purpose was to better understand how the Democrats were
planning an alleged electoral fraud.
At
the time Feeney asked Curtis to create the vote-transfer program, he
was simultaneously a Florida legislator, candidate to spokesman of
the Florida House of Representatives, and lobbyist for YEI. Curtis
built the program and submitted it to his boss, Mrs. Li Woan Yang,
owner of YEI. According to Curtis’ sworn statement, the woman chided
him: "You understand that, in order to get the contract, we have
to hide the manipulation of the source code. This program is needed
to control the vote in South Florida." Curtis said he was
troubled when he realized "that they were trying to steal the
election" and told his boss "that nobody could produce any
program like it." The woman replied that "she wished to
place the job in Feeney’s hands and left the room carrying the
software."
Raymond
Lemme was an official at the Office of the Inspector General of
Florida when he was given the task to investigate Curtis’ allegation,
who described a meeting he held with the investigator in June 2003.
The future suicide told him he "had followed the corruption to
the final top" and that the story would soon explode, all this
according to the sworn testimony of computer expert Curtis.
Exactly
what explosive information Lemme had may never be known, because two
weeks later, on July 1, 2003, he was found dead at the Knights Inn in
Valdosta, Ga., his left arm sliced twice with a razor blade,
according to the report from local police, which ruled it "a
suicide."
The
BradBlog, which has followed this case closely, questions the version
of suicide, alleging that there was no autopsy, that no one
investigated why the deceased was in a motel 130 kilometers from his
Florida home, that there are inconsistencies in the dates of the
receipts for the lodging (he was found dead one day after he left the
inn, according to the motel records), that the police hid the
photographs of the scene of the crime (they reappeared some time
later), that Detective Shannon Floyd delivered a report that
contradicted the images (they show a severe blow to the neck of the
deceased) and refused to talk to BradBlog, etc.
The
case was reopened one year later but was shut again at the request of
the Florida Department of Transportation. BradBlog wonders why that
Florida public agency had so much influence on the Georgia Police
Department and recalled that Lemme’s relatives and coworkers said the
official never expressed a desire to die.
Sources
from Project Censored:
– Student
researcher: Christine Wilson
– Academic
evaluator: Mary Ann Walker, PhD
– “EXCLUSIVE:
OH Election Fraud Attorney Reacts to the Death of Mike Connell”
Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG, 12/22/2008
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6768
– “Where’s
the MSM Coverage of the Death of Connell, a Top Bush/Rove/GOP
Operative?” Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG, 12/24/2008
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6772
– “On
Eve of Election Day, Is the Nation’s Voting System Ready? Reports
of Irregularities Pour in from Across US in Record Early Voting”
Amy Goodman and Mark Crispin Miller, Democracy Now! November 3, 2008
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/3/on_eve_of_election_day_is
– “"Man
in the Middle" Attacks to Subvert the Vote” Bev Harris, Black
Box Voting November 2008
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/man_in_the_middle
Other
sources consulted:
–
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/402
–
http://www.atlargely.com/2008/12/one-of-my-sources-died-in-a-plane-crash-last-night.html
– http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6765
Ernesto
Carmona writes for several news outlets, among them Argenpress.
