"THE SECRET HISTORY OF AIRPLANE SABOTAGE", Part One by Sherman H.
Skolnick 8/6/01 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.skolnicksreport.com
In November, 1972, Richard M. Nixon was re-elected President. One month
later, on behalf of the Nixon White House, America's secret political
police, the American Gestapo, the FBI, and the American CIA, arranged to
sabotage a commercial airplane headed for Chicago. On board were twelve
Watergate figures, including Dorothy Hunt, wife of the Watergate
burglar, E.Howard Hunt. They had reportedly blackmailed two million
dollars out of Nixon threatening, among other things, to publicize
documents they had showing Tricky Dick, along with top officials of the
FBI and the CIA, had planned and carried out the political assassination
of President John F.
Kennedy.
We received a mysterious phone call. "You should look into the crash
near Midway Airport. They murdered Mrs. Hunt and the others." From
various circumstances we determined that the call came from an official
in Midway Airport Tower, Chicago. We started our own investigation. In
1973, I wrote a book, "The Secret History of Airplane Sabotage". So far
as I could find out, there never was an authoritative book on the
subject up to that time. And even now, I know of no other such book. A
sizeable book publisher undertook to publish my work. The book, however,
was stopped in the print cycle and no copies became available. The book
was suppressed by the Rockefellers, at the time the major owners of UAL,
Inc., the parent firm of United Air Lines, with the United Air Lines
crash near Midway Airport being a major section of the
book.
I am posting starting as Part One excerpts from the book. In some
instances, it has been updated and slightly revised to show details
uncovered after
1973.
THE WATERGATE PLANE
CRASH
1. THE PEOPLE. Upwards of twelve persons connected in one way or another
with Watergate, boarded United Air Lines Flight 553 on the afternoon of
December 8, 1972. They had something in common. That week there had been
a gas pipeline lobbyists meeting as part of the American Bar Association
meeting in Washngton, D.C. It was conducted by Roger Moreau. His
secretary was Nancy Parker. Among those attending were Ralph Blodgett
and James W. Krueger, both attorneys for the Northern Natural Gas Co.,
of Omaha, Nebraska. Associated with them were Lon Bayer, attorney for
Kansas-Nebraska Natural Gas Co.; Wilbur Erickson, president, Federal
Land Bank in Omaha. This was a belligerant group determined to blow the
lid off the Watergate case. Reason: Former U.S. Attorney General, John
Mitchell, and his friends running the Justice Department were putting
the spear into Northern Natural Gas. Some officials of that firm and its
subsidiaries were indicted on federal criminal charges, September 7,
1972, in Omaha, Chicago, and Hammond, Indiana. Charge: bribery of local
officials in Northwest Indiana to let the gas pipeline go through.
(Chicago Daily News, 9/8/72). To blackmail their way out of these
charges, the Omaha firm had uncovered documents showing that Mitchell,
while U.S. Attorney General in 1969, dropped anti-trust charges against
a competitor of Northern Natural Gas---El Paso Gas Co. The dropping of
the charges against El Paso was worth 300 million dollars. A spokesman
for Mitchell belatedly claimed, in March, 1973, that Mitchell had
"disqualified" himself in 1969, because Mitchell's law partner
represented El Paso. The Justice Department under Mitchell, dropped the
charges. Period. About the same time, Mitchell, through a law partner as
nominee, got a stock interest in El Paso. Gas and oil interests, such as
El Paso, Gulf Resources, and others contributed heavily to Nixon's spy
fund, supervised by
Mitchell.
[Earlier, I had spoken out about the apparent bribery of Mitchell as
Attorney General by El Paso which caused him to proceed to prosecute on
my charges, Chicago Federal Appeals Judge Otto Kerner, Jr., for
bribery. The highest level sitting federal judge sent to jail for
bribery in
U.S.history.]
Pipeline official Krueger was carrying the Mitchell-El Paso documents on
the plane. He had told his wife that he had in his possession
irreplaceable papers of a sensitive nature. For months after the crash,
his widow demanded, to no avail, that United Air Lines turn over to her
his briefcase. It later came out in the pipeline trial in Hammond, that
Blodgett had been browbeating federal officials, to drop the criminal
charges just prior to the crash. (Chicago Tribune, 5/18/73.) [Our
investigation uncovered that most of the local officials, to be
government witnesses against the pipeline, were murdered just prior to
trial. In all, some five Northwest Indiana
officials.]
Dorothy Hunt, Watergate pay-off woman, who offered executive clemency
directly on behalf of Nixon to some of the Watergate defendants, was
seeking to leave the U.S. with over 2 million Dollars in cash and
negotiables that she had gotten from CREEP, Committee to Re-Elect the
President. [She was so concerned about these valuables, she purchased a
separate first class seat next to her on the plane for this luggage.]
She and her husband, E. Howard Hunt, the Watergate conspirator, were a
"C.I.A. couple", two agents "married" and living together. Early in
December, 1972,both were threatening to blow the lid off the White House
if (a) he wasn't freed of the criminal charges; (b) Nixon didn't pay
heavy to suppress the documents they had showing he was implicated in
the planning and carrying out, by the FBI and the CIA, of the political
murder of President Kennedy; and (c) Dorothy and Howard Hunt didn't both
get several million dollars. Some of these details are in the Memo of
Watergate double-agent, James McCord, a CIA official in charge of the
Agency's physical security; details before the Senator Ervin Committee.
(N.Y. Times, 5/9/73.) Hunt claimed, according to McCord, to have the
data necessary to impeach Nixon. McCord said matters were coming to a
head early in December, 1972. Mrs. Hunt was unhappy with her job of
going all over the country to bribe defendants and witnesses in the
bugging case. She wanted
out.
Mrs.Hunt was on the way to arrange to take her money out of the country,
possibly Costa Rica, to link up with international swindler Robert Vesco
who was there at the time; through Harold C. Carlstead, whose wife was
Mrs. Hunt's cousin. Carlstead reportedly did accounting and tax work for
mobster-owned businesses in the Chicago-area. He operated two Holiday
Inn motels in Chicago's south suburbs---at 174th and Torrence, Lansing,
Illinois and at 171st and Halsted, Harvey, Illinois. Carlstead's motel
on Torrence was reportedly a favorite hang out for gangsters and dope
traffickers such as apparently "Cool" Freddie Smith, Grover Barnes, and
the late Chicago mobster Sam DeStefano (who aided the American CIA in
bloody tricks and was snuffed out to silence him), to name a few. Mrs.
Hunt had (a) Ten Thousand Dollars in untraceable cash; (b) Forty
Thousand Dollars in so-called "Barker" bills, traceable to Watergate spy
Bernard Barker; and (c) upwards of Two Million Dollars in American
Express money orders, travelers checks, and postal money orders. (As
shown by testimony before the National Transportation Safety Board,
re-opened Watergate plane crash hearings, June 13-14, 1973. Hearings
re-opened as a result of my lawsuit claiming sabotage covered up by the
N.T.S.B.) Carlstead issued a fake "cover" story that had (only) Ten
Thousand Dollars with Mrs. Hunt. A story swallowed up by the
Establishment
Press.
Mrs. Hunt got on Flight 553 with Michele Clark, CBS Network newswoman,
going to do an exclusive story on Watergate. Mrs. Hunt, Mitchell,
Nixon---the story could have destroyed Nixon at the time. Ms Clark had
lots of insight into the bugging and cover-up through her boyfriend, a
CIA operative. In the summer of 1972, prior to any major revelations of
Watergate, Ms Clark tried to pick the brains of Chicago Congressman
George Collins, regarding the bugging of the Democratic headquarters. Ms
Clark was sitting with Cong. Collins on the plane. (Testimony 6/14/73,
of Cong. Collins' public relations
director.)
After the crash, Michele Clark's employer, CBS Network News, ordered and
demanded that the body be cremated by the southside Chicago mortician
handling the matter---possibly to cover up foul play. Later, the
mortician was murdered in his business establishment, an unsolved crime.
(We interviewed close confidants of her family who informed us of the
details how CBS applied tremendous pressure and offered large sums for
silence on the crash details and having her body cremated contrary to
her family's
wishes.)
Also on the plane were four or more people who knew about a labor union
that had given a large "donation" to CREEP to head-off an criminal
indictment of a Chicago labor union hoodlum(at the time of the book,
1973, actively investigated by
us).
For many years, like clockwork, one Chicagoan went to Washington, D.C.
on Monday and came back Friday afternoon on Flight 553 or its
equivalent: Lawrence T. O'Connor, Apt. 5-C, 999 North Lake Shore Drive,
Chicago, Illinois. On Friday, December 8, 1972, he received a call from
someone he knows in the White House, telling him not to take Flight 553
but to go instead to a special
meeting.
My long-time friend, political activist Dick Gregory, informed me that
there had been strenuous efforts to steer him that same afternoon onto
United Air Lines Flight 553. Luckily, he had changed his
mind.
Also getting on Flight 553 was a reputed "hit-man", pursuing Mrs. Hunt
and others, and going under the "cover" of being a top Narcotics
official with DALE (Drug Abuse Law Enforcement). He used the name Harold
R. Metcalf. He is an unusual "narc"; he worked directly for Nixon.
Metcalf told the pilot he was packing a gun, and so Metcalf was assigned
seat B-17, near the stewardesses' jump seat and also near the food
galley and the rear door of the plane. After the crash, he walked out of
the cracked open fuselage of the pancaked plane wearing a jumpsuit. A
former Military Intelligence investigator, who used his credentials to
get into the crash site, identified the person posing as "Harold
Metcalf" as an overseas CIA parachute spy. (Investigator's testimony at
re-opened N.T.S.B. hearings, 6/14/73). Also see Metcalf's statement
about being a "narc" and his gun on the plane. (N.T.S.B. Docket SA-435,
Exhibit 6- B, p. 17, surviving passenger statements). Metcalf evidently
supervised certain foul play, possibly cyanide, directed at certain
passengers, but he didn't know of the over all sabotage plan. One of our
staff investigators confronted Metcalf about a week after the
crash.
(a) Metcalf, supposedly a government narcotics bigshot, knows nothings
about dope. (b) in response to our question, "Did you know the plane was
sabotaged?", he blurted out half a sentence, "It was not supposed
to....", turning purple, he then left the room. Evidently, he was a
double cut-out, an espionage term for an operative to be himself
eliminated by someone else. His survival was an oversight. (N.T.S.B.
testimony,
6/13-14/73).
More details from the suppressed book in further parts of this story.
Stay
tuned.
=============================================================================================================================================
Since 1958 Mr. Skolnick has been a court-reformer and since 1963,
Founder/Chairman, Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts. Since
1991, a regular panelist and since 1995, Moderator/Producer of
"Broadsides", a public access Cable TV Program, cablecast within Chicago
to some 400,000 viewers each Monday evening, 9 p.m., Channel 21 Cable
TV. For a heavy packet of our printed stories, send $5.00 [U.S. funds]
and a stamped, self-addressed BUSINESS size envelope [#10 envelope,
4-1/8 x 9-1/2] WITH THREE STAMPS on it, to Citizen's Committee to Clean
Up the Courts, Sherman H. Skolnick, Chairman, 9800 So. Oglesby Ave.,
Chicago IL 60617-4870. WEB-SITE: http://www.skolnicksreport.com [NOTE
"s" after name in website address]. E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Office, 8 a.m. to midnight, most 7 days: (773) 375-5741 PLEASE DO NOT
BOMBARD THIS LISTED PHONE WITH ROUTINE CALLS. For updates of our work,
not an expensive call: (773)
731-1100.
