- We called it the Watergate Plane Crash. As our private
investigation continued, the National Transportation Safety Board, N.T.S.B.,
set public hearings for February, 1973. Conducted in a large meeting hall
in one of the very large motels near O'Hare Airport, Chicago. They started
with the witness list. After some of the witnesses testified, we were able
to interview some of them in the hallway.
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- One witness was a former four-engine military bomber
pilot with loads of aircraft and air-tower experience. Retired from the
military, he worked for a firm that supplied materials for the paving of
parking lots. By a strange coincidence (or on purpose?) someone at his
firm told him to measure the parking lot starting at 2 p.m., Friday afternoon,
December 8, 1972, which turned out to be right under the in-coming flight
path of United Air Lines Flight 553. He observed some things which fit
in with our probe that it was sabotage.
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- With his help and that of others including witnesses,
we compiled a list of details showing that the NTSB panel were carefully
evading from going into. I went home and began quickly putting together
a lawsuit against the Safety Board for covering up airplane sabotage. We
filed the lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court and arranged with the County
Sheriff to have one of his deputies accompany us as we together went to
the NTSB hearings in session. I had prepared over a hundred copies of the
lawsuit, all suitably stamped with the Clerk's Office markings just like
the original filed copy. The deputy sheriff had a copy of the lawsuit together
with a summons commanding the NTSB officials to appear in court.
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- As we arrived, the Safety Board panel was already proceeding
with testimony. "How do you want me to do this" the deputy sheriff
whispered to me. I instructed him, "Go right up to the stage on which
the Safety Board panel of five is sitting. Do not wait for a recess. Serve
the papers, as provided by law, on the woman in the middle, the Chairperson."
That is what he did. As he approached her with the court papers, she asked
him "What is this?" He politely answered, "It is for you,
ma'm." The minute the Safety panel boss looked at the court papers,
she was alarmed. She abruptly recessed the hearing. Most of those in the
large meeting room spilled out into the hallway.There we handed out copies
of the lawsuit to whosoever seemed interested. The Safety Board's general
counsel came up to me, "I have to have a private talk with you away
from this crowd, Mr. Skolnick."
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- We went down the hall to be alone. "How much do
you want?" he barked at me. "If it is within reason, we'll take
care of it today. It'll be cheaper than litigating this. You have to sign
an agreement not to further divulge any of this."
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- I must have had an angry look on my face when I responded.
"Hey, where did you get the idea that my charges of sabotage are a
shake-down?" And I began hollering, "Listen, you mouthpiece,
your job is to show up in court to answer our charges. I AM NOT FOR SALE.
Go back to the panel and tell them. SKOLNICK IS NOT FOR SALE! You're not
going to buy me like some crooked judge."
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- Thereafter another lawyer sat down and talked to me in
the motel restaurant. "Mr. Skolnick, I represent the families of those
who died in that crash. We have pending claims against United Air Lines.
Your assertions of air sabotage tend to let United Air Lines off the hook.
Please for the sake of these families, drop your lawsuit. You are undermining
our multi-million dollar claims and that is not fair."
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- I responded, "Are you saying I should also be part
of this cover up? Our motto is, 'Let the truth be told, though the Heavens
crumble'. Do you realize that United Air Lines is part of covering up the
sabotage of one of their own planes? One of Nixon's closest pals is the
head of United Air Lines. The cover up included Mrs. E. Howard Hunt's documents
showing Nixon was part of an FBI/CIA plot to assassinate President John
F. Kennedy. You want me to shut up about all that? No way. I am sorry."
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- The lawyer took a narrow view as if he did not understand
any of that. As if he were suddenly stupid. "I do not want to know
anything about all that. I simply want to push our claims against United
Air Lines. Can we somehow make it up to you?" He said. Miffed, I replied,
"Hey, hey, don't start offering me a piece of your deal in return
for my silence."
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- In Chicago my discussions about air sabotage and the
Watergate Plane Crash caused some student groups to invite me to speak
at their college or university. As a result, persons showed up at such
meetings who later spoke to me privately.
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- "Here. Look at my credentials. I drive an ambulance
for one of the hospitals. On the afternoon of the crash, I was sent to
the crash zone. Hey, but get this. They did not allow me to approach the
burning airplane. I was on a mission of mercy and these strange types stopped
me. There were about 150 to 200 of them. They refused to show me their
credentials." That is what one eyewitness told me. He continued, "Friends
of mine in the fire and police departments told me also they were not allowed
to approach the airplane. These apparent federal types were there on location
ahead of both the fire and police."
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- After the crash, we made public statements that 200 FBI
and Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA, operatives, refusing to show their
credentials, had taken over the crash zone, coincident with the crash or
even shortly BEFORE. We were called "liar". Then, on June 13,
1973, Chairman John Reed, of the National Transportation Safety Board,
told the House Government Activities Subcommittee, that he sent a letter
to the FBI, that: (a) never in living memory had the FBI acted as in the
Flight 553 crash. Reed said 50 FBI agents came into the crash zone shortly
after the crash; (b) one FBI agent proceeded into Midway Control Tower
and took over the tape relating to Flight 553, without asking permission;
(c) before the N.T.S.B. investigation could do so, the FBI conducted 26
interviews, including of surviving flight attendants. The FBI interviews
were completed within 20 hours of the crash.
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- For 6 months, they claimed we were "liars"
when we said 200 FBI and DIA agents were in the crash site concident with
the crash. Thereafter, the FBI admitted that 50 were there.
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- How is that possible? The Chicago Fire and Police Department
people responded in a couple of minutes. The FBI and DIA headquarters is
downtown Chicago. Even if they immediately after the crash took a helicopter,
they could not have arrived, as they somehow did, AHEAD OF THE FIRE AND
POLICE. We took up this angle with a member of Congress who quizzed the
FBI about this. Back came a letter that the FBI had apparently been surveilling
the plane and had jurisdiction because of what they termed federal statutes
relating to "Air Piracy". This was in a letter signed by the
Acting Director of FBI [this was about a year after Director J. Edgar Hoover
had been poison murdered in his home, May, 1972, just as the Watergate
matter was about to occur].
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- FBI having jurisdiction because of AIR PIRACY? Did someone
on the plane, radio the FBI that someone else on that plane was either
trying to steal Mrs. Hunt's two million dollars of "hush money",
in negotiables, she and her husband got from the Nixon White House. Was
someone trying to steal her baggage enroute to Chicago; containing documents
proving Nixon was part of a FBI/CIA plot to assassinate President Kennedy?
Mrs. Hunt, worried about her valuables, bought a separate first class seat
right near her on which she piled her luggage. So AIR PIRACY was one way
the FBI had of trying to explain away why upwards of 150 of their agents
were already waiting in or near Midway Airport that afternoon, for the
in-coming flight with the Watergate 12.
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- From various sources we found out that the FBI and the
DIA were under Nixon White House "national security" orders to
arrest Mrs. Hunt and others on the plane for being part of a plot to blackmail
Nixon. That is how and why the FBI/DIA was already there ahead of the local
authorities.
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- A Chicago Fire Department official we interviewed told
us, "Nobody explained to us how and why the FBI was able to keep us
out of the crash site. The plane had pancaked on top of one or more residences
and was smoldering."
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- In an interview, a supervisory offical of the Chicago
Police Department informed us, "I was told to assemble my men in Marquette
Park which is several blocks away from where the plane crashed. We were
forbidden by our brass from approaching the crash site. The higher ups
said it was upon orders of the FBI and the DIA and the White House. Someone
mumbled something to me about 'national security'".
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- Saturday, the day after the crash, parts of the airplane
fuselage were quickly buried in a city dump. An official of the city department
told us, "The orders came from the top. Someone of authority did not
want parts of flight 553 to be examined at all. We came with heavy equipment,
a special select crew, pledged to silence, and buried parts of the plane
deep in a city dump. I am in trouble if you ever use my name."
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- A few months after the crash, at a United Air Lines company
meeting, one of their stewardesses got up and began loudly complaining
the company bosses were covering up sabotage in the Flight 553 crash near
Midway Airport. She was quickly hooted down. Security people shoved her
out of the meeting. Later, she was fired.
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- So, the air sabotage cover up pieces were one by one
falling to place. On Decemnber 9, 1972, one day after the crash, Nixon
White House aide Egil (Bud) Krogh, Jr., also involved in the Ellsberg burglary
caper, was appointed Undersecretary of Transportation, supervising the
National Transportation Safety Board and The Federal Aviation Administration,
F.A.A., the two agencies supposedly going to "investigate" the
crash of Flight 553.
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- On December 19, 1972, White House deputy assistant to
Nixon, and secretary to the Cabinet, Alexander P. Butterfield, was appointed
as the new head of the FAA. Butterfield, an air officer for 20 years, was
also CIA aviation liason. (See, for example, Jack Anderson's column, Chicago
Daily News, 5/8/73.) During the Senate Watergate Committee hearings, summer
of 1973, Butterfield as a witness suddenly blurted out that Nixon had everything
occurring in or near the Oval Office taped. These tapes, which Nixon originally
refused to disclose, became the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court decision
against Nixon, as well as part of the Nixon impeachment matters resulting
in ihis resignation, August, 1974.
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- Dwight L. Chapin, Nixon's appointment secretary, became,
five weeks after the crash, a top executive of United Air Lines. Chapin
reportedly had no prior business experience. At the original NTSB crash
hearings in February, 1973, he reportedly threatened media people with
reprisals if they mentioned sabotage; reprisals such as using Clay Whitehead,
Nixon's communications czar, to seek the break-up of the networks on anti-trust
charges. Remember- in the 1970s, the Rockefelles were the largest stockholder
of UAL, Inc., parent of United Air Lines. Further, in the 1970s, the Rockfellers
owned all three major news networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC. To an extent even
now, the Rockefelles still have a heavy presence in the ownership of the
major networks.
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- Even before the crash, Herbert W. Kalmbach, Nixon's personal
attorney, was the lawyer for United Air Lines and Marriot Corp., which
at the time had an airplane in-flight food catering service.
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- So, if I was right about Flight 553 and United Air Lines,
at the time, largest air carrier in the U.S., they could have lost their
certificate to fly. The Rockefellers orchestrated the media against our
investigation. This was long before the era of internet, long bbefore TV
on the web through video streaming, long before more open-minded radio
talk shows, and many years before public access Cable TV used by some like
us to get around the press whores. [Our one hour weekly public access Cable
TV Show, "Broadsides", cablecast within Chicago, reaches some
400,000 viewers each week, on a public access Cable TV system that is the
largest in the U.S. Portions of our show, on video streaming, are on our
website.] The latest technology and changes like that, for the moment,
help the underdogs tell the awful truth. Such as about a forbidden subject,
"The Secret History of Airplane Sabotage".
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- More parts of this series coming.
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- Stay tuned.
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