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Jim Fetzer: The Strange Death of Paul Wellstone


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Paul Wellstone, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born in Washington, on 21st July, 1944. After high school he attended the University of North Carolina, where he obtained a BA (1965) and a doctorate in political science (1969). As a student he was active in the anti-Vietnam War campaign.

Wellstone taught at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, for twenty-five years. He was also director of the Minnesota Community Energy Program.

A member of the Democratic Party, Wellstone helped organize support for Jessie Jackson during his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988. He remained active in politics and in 1990 Wellstone defeated the Republican Rudy Boschwitz to win a seat in the Senate. In 1996 he beat Boschwitz by a larger margin.

Wellstone developed a reputation as the most left-wing member of the Senate. He supported gun control, abortion rights and was a strong opponent of military intervention in Iraq.

Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash d on 25th October, 2002 during an election campaign. His wife of nearly 40 years, Shelia Ison, and their 33-year-old daughter Marcia, also died in the accident. Wellstone's replacement, Walter Mondale, was defeated by the Republican, Norm Coleman, in the November, 2002 Senate election.

In 2004 James H. Fetzer and Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs published American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone.

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Guest Stephen Turner

Wellstone's death comes almost two years to the day after a similar plane crash killed another Democratic Senate hopeful,Missouri Govenor, Mel Carnahan. He had defeated John Ashcroft in the contest for Govenor.

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Wellstone's death comes almost two years to the day after a similar plane crash killed another Democratic Senate hopeful,Missouri Govenor, Mel Carnahan. He had defeated John Ashcroft in the contest for Govenor.

might add; Carnahan defeated Ashcroft when he, Carnahan, was DEAD!

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Guest Stephen Turner
Wellstone's death comes almost two years to the day after a similar plane crash killed another Democratic Senate hopeful,Missouri Govenor, Mel Carnahan. He had defeated John Ashcroft in the contest for Govenor.

might add; Carnahan defeated Ashcroft when he, Carnahan, was DEAD!

Ah yes, thanks david for that reminder, the good people of Missouri ,when faced with the choise, A dead man, or Ashcroft, made the correct call, dead man every time ;):lol: Pity shrub did'nt get the message,God must have been out that day.

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Guest James H. Fetzer

New research on the death of Paul Wellstone:

It was a pleasure to appear on The Mike Malloy Show on airamericaradio.com for an interview about the death of Senator Paul Wellstone. The interview was archived and can be found by scrolling down to Friday, 12 August 2005:

http://www.whiterosesociety.org/Malloy.html

Additional new evidence about the case has appeared in an article co-authored with John P. Costella, Ph.D., "The NTSB Failed Wellstone", published in fromthewilderness.com on 6 July 2005 and subsequently in FROM THE WILDERNESS (31 July 2005), pp. 15-22. It has now become available on line at the following link:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/...wellstone.shtml

Paul Wellstone, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born in Washington, on 21st July, 1944. After high school he attended the University of North Carolina, where he obtained a BA (1965) and a doctorate in political science (1969). As a student he was active in the anti-Vietnam War campaign.

Wellstone taught at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, for twenty-five years. He was also director of the Minnesota Community Energy Program.

A member of the Democratic Party, Wellstone helped organize support for Jessie Jackson during his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988. He remained active in politics and in 1990 Wellstone defeated the Republican Rudy Boschwitz to win a seat in the Senate. In 1996 he beat Boschwitz by a larger margin.

Wellstone developed a reputation as the most left-wing member of the Senate. He supported gun control, abortion rights and was a strong opponent of military intervention in Iraq.

Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash d on 25th October, 2002 during an election campaign. His wife of nearly 40 years, Shelia Ison, and their 33-year-old daughter Marcia, also died in the accident. Wellstone's replacement, Walter Mondale, was defeated by the Republican, Norm Coleman, in the November, 2002 Senate election.

Edited by James H. Fetzer
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Guest James H. Fetzer

Intellectual rubbish about AMERICAN ASSASSINATION posted on amazon.com.

Compare what he says here with the contents of the book and with information

that can be found at the sources cited above or at assassinationscience.com.

My comments appear here [between the brackets]. This is a good example of

a hatchet job whose misguided author has no respect for logic or for evidence

by authoring a review that trades upon the ignorance and gullibility of readers.

Josiah Thompson (Bolinas, California USA)

American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone by Four

Arrows and Jim Fetzer

Edition: Paperback

Price: $11.20

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

15 used from $9.05

2 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

More tabloid nonsense from Fetzer and friend.., August 5, 2005

The two co-authors parade their Ph.D.s in philosophy and education to make you

believe they are serious analysts. They aren't. Neither has ever piloted an

aircraft and their analysis shows that they know butkus about aviation.

[Four Arrows holds both a Ph.D. and an Ed.D. and has authored about a dozen

more books that Josiah Thompson, who is making a career of trashing books

that I have edited. (See his other reviews on amazon.com.) I piloted a jet as

a midshipman while I was in college. There is ample evidence of knowledge of

aviation and expert contributions distributed throughout our research. This is an

example of the genetic fallacy. Would an author have to have committed murder

to write about it? Read the book and you will see the distortion in this passage.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims it is a sinister fact that communication with the Wellstone

plane was suddenly lost. It wasn't. During its approach, the Wellstone plane

made all its expected communications checks. There never was any interruption in

communication with the plane.

[There was no distress call, even though the plane--whose passengers included

a US Senator, his wife and daughter, and three aides--was going down in a

remote, swampy area where the rapid arrival of first responders might make

the difference between life and death. There were two pilots. He is committing

a fallacy of equivocation by playing with words. That the copilot, who had handled

most of the communications, did not send a distress call suggests he sent no call

because communications were disabled and he was unable to send out a call.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims it is a sinister fact that the plane's propellers were found

to be not giving much thrust to the aircraft at the time of the crash. He's

right about the propellers not providing much thrust but wrong about this fact

being in any way sinister. The NTSB studied the propellers and found they were

in the "flight idle position" at the time of the crash. This setting would not

provide much thrust since the pilots in their approach were reducing their

airspeed in advance of landing. It was the proper and normal setting for

propellers in an approach.

[This is a nice example of "spinning" by trying to turn vice into virtue. Since

the plane was in distress, the pilots would be expected to "power up" and get out

of trouble, which is exactly what happened during the NTSB's own simulations.

They were unable to bring the plane down, even when it was flown abnormally

slowly. They were not landing. The field was miles to the north from where they

were. This remark displays either massive ignorance or deliberate deception.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims that FBI agents from Minneapolis got to the crash site too

early and hence must have had foreknowledge of the impending accident. The

agents weren't from Minneapolis. They were field agents from the area ordered

into the crash site by radio when it happened.

[Rick Wahlberg, the Sheriff of St. Louis County, reported that he had arrived at

the airport at 1:30 PM and saw agents he knew personally from the St. Paul FBI

"rapid response team". Gary Ulman, the airport assistant manager, confirmed to

me that they had been there at least since 1 PM. Paul McCable, the spokesman

for the FBI, said they had not arrived before 3:30 PM, contradicting both Wahlberg

and Ulman. These agents were not in the area at the time, as Christopher Bollyn

of amercianfreepress.com confirmed at the time. Thompson is making all this up.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims that a secret electromagnetic pulse weapon downed the plane.

He claims to know this because a cell phone in the area malfunctioned at about

the time of the crash! First, no such weapon is known to exist. Second, the guy

whose cell phone malfunctioned was named John Ongaro. Back in June 2003, Kevin

Diaz, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, found Ongaro and talked to

him. Diaz wrote on 6/3/03: "Ongaro, who was near the airport when Wellstone's

plane went down, has dismissed the significance of his experience, in which he

said his cell phone made 'strange sounds and then disconnected. It's not unusual

for cell phones, especially in northern Minnesota,' he said."

[There are lots of reports about RF, EM, and HERF weaponry, so Thomson has to

be "pulling our leg". Truly disgusting. Just go onto google and you can find lots

of information about them. An expert on EM, who holds a Ph.D. in physics with

a specialty in electromagnetism, contributed a section about them to the book.

Apparently Thompson thinks he possesses more knowledge than experts in the

field. They can take out all computerized components, including stall warning

systems, the course deviation indicator and communications, as well as disabling

electrical components, such as the electrical switches that control the pitch of the

props. The fire burned bluish-white rather than sooty-black, which indicates that

it was electrical in origin. The fire department could not put it out, but the NTSB

says nothing to explain it. The use of a weapon of this kind would explain the

loss of communications and the loss of control, the smoke and the fire, and a

number of other oddities about the crash, including the odd cell phone anomaly

that John Ongaro experienced en route to the funeral that was bringing Wellstone

into the area. While Ongaro did later seek to minimize the significance of his

experience, he was quite alarmed about it at the time and strongly believed it

could be connected to the crash. We all know witnesses can be pressured into

changing their mind. Read the book for the emails he sent to me at the time,

where his words contradict Thompson's account. This guy is counting on a naive

audience to simply accept his review and not compare it to the book's contents.]

The list of factual mistakes could be virtually infinitely expanded. These two

show about as much care in their research as a pair of reporters for the

National Enquirer writing about three-headed twins! They take advantage of the

fact that no one is going to take the trouble to look at the carefully

researched and documented NTSB report on the crash. That report shows in

exquisite detail that the crash was caused by the airplane getting ahead of two

flaky pilots. As another reviewer of this book has mentioned, the radar track of

the plane shows that it dropped out of the overcast low and slow and slightly

off course. In trying to remedy these problems, the air crew got behind on what

was happening and the plane stalled out at too low an altitude to recover. No

sinister elements in all of this. Just ineptitude.

[The plane was exceptional, the weather was fine, and the pilots were well-

qualified. Richard Conry, the primary pilot, had 5,200 hours of experience

and an Air Transport Pilot's rating, the highest commercial rating. PLUS he

had passed his FAA flight check just two days before the fatal flight. By the

government's own standards, he was highly qualified to fly this plane. Even

the NTSB's own simulation evidence contradicted its own findings. A member

of the NTSB team, Richard Healing, who signed the report, admitted that they

had no idea what had happened and were merely "speculating". The NTSB is

not permitted to investigate a crash scene as a "crime scene" unless the US

Attorney General declares it to be the scene of a crime. That was not done

in this case. Anyone who wants to know the skinny about Wellstone has to

go beyond hatchet-job reviews by hack writers to the serious and informed

studies of the case, including the book but also more recent work that may

be found at http://www.assassinationscience.com and links given above.]

New research on the death of Paul Wellstone:

It was a pleasure to appear on The Mike Malloy Show on airamericaradio.com for an interview about the death of Senator Paul Wellstone. The interview was archived and can be found by scrolling down to Friday, 12 August 2005:

http://www.whiterosesociety.org/Malloy.html

Additional new evidence about the case has appeared in an article co-authored with John P. Costella, Ph.D., "The NTSB Failed Wellstone", published in fromthewilderness.com on 6 July 2005 and subsequently in FROM THE WILDER-

NESS (31 July 2005), pp. 15-22. It has now become available on line at the following link:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/...wellstone.shtml

Paul Wellstone, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born in Washington, on 21st July, 1944. After high school he attended the University of North Carolina, where he obtained a BA (1965) and a doctorate in political science (1969). As a student he was active in the anti-Vietnam War campaign.

Wellstone taught at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, for twenty-five years. He was also director of the Minnesota Community Energy Program.

A member of the Democratic Party, Wellstone helped organize support for Jessie Jackson during his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988. He remained active in politics and in 1990 Wellstone defeated the Republican Rudy Boschwitz to win a seat in the Senate. In 1996 he beat Boschwitz by a larger margin.

Wellstone developed a reputation as the most left-wing member of the Senate. He supported gun control, abortion rights and was a strong opponent of military intervention in Iraq.

Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash d on 25th October, 2002 during an election campaign. His wife of nearly 40 years, Shelia Ison, and their 33-year-old daughter Marcia, also died in the accident. Wellstone's replacement, Walter Mondale, was defeated by the Republican, Norm Coleman, in the November, 2002 Senate election.

Edited by James H. Fetzer
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Guest James H. Fetzer

Another amazon.com hatchet-job review of AMERICAN ASSASSINATION

_________________________________________

This guy is a one-time attorney and former prosecutor who once enrolled in

a course of mine. An ardent Republican, he took offense at my suggestion

that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld may have been involved in

bringing about the death of Senator Paul Wellstone. He threated lawsuits

against me, my collaborators, the editor and the publisher of the alternative

newspaper where my columns on this subject first appeared, my Chancellor,

and the Regents of the University of Minnesota for $5,000,000. He actually

filed a suit, which was dismissed on summary judgment. He appealed and the

dismissal was upheld. He created FETZERclaimsDEBUNK@yahoogroups.com for the

purpose of attacking my research. There are now more than 2000 posts on the

site, most of which attack me, but to no effect. Notice that, even though I

pointed out the fundamental injustice of his amazon.com review on his site on

22 July 2005, it remains there to this day. That suggests this hatchet job

cannot be merely due to incompetence or ignorance but may result from malice.

Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 08:00:45 -0500

From: jfetzer@d.umn.edu

Reply-To: FETZERclaimsDEBUNK@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [FETZERclaimsDEBUNK] A question of competence . . .

To: FETZERclaimsDEBUNK@yahoogroups.com

While I am taking a break from the forum, I have noticed a review by one Tom

Bieter on amazon.com (see below) that raises serious questions about his own

competence as a former prosecutor, past attorney, and self-described "legal

philosopher". Notice, in particular, that Bieter commits a fallacy of equivocation

by not observing that proving beyond a reasonable doubt that WELLSTONE WAS

ASSASSINATED is perfectly consistent with not having proven, even by some

preponderance of evidence, that SPECIFIC NAMED INDIVIDUALS committed the

crime! Nothing I have said contradicts David Ray Griffin's remark about our findings.

To offer a simple illustration, we can know BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that a

person is dead because we have the body. We may even know from the cause of

death that more than one person was involved in committing the crime. But we

might not yet know their names or their motivation and consequently not be in

a position to bring any indictment against anyone for the commission of that

crime. This should be obvious to a beginning first-year student of the law.

Indeed, it should be apparent to anyone who thinks about it, whether or not

they have any background in the law or not. It is basic "common knowledge".

In my opinion, publishing such a fallacious review on amazon.com raises some

serious questions about Mr. Bieter's competence in the roles he emphasizes

as a former prosecutor, past attorney, and "legal philosopher". This error

is so elementary that it is very difficult to imagine how anyone who is even

minimally qualified to address these issues could commit it--unless, perhaps,

they wanted to convey a false impression by citing their credentials to con-

ceal the blatantly fallacious reasoning they were deploying. The motivation,

of course, in that case, would have to be corrupt. Assess it for yourself.

I should add that the example I gave of the improbability of a series of ten

"reader's reviews" that were short, negative, and vague was based upon what

is known as the "classic" conception of probability, which determines their

values on the basis of assumptions about equally-possible outcomes. A more

telling analysis would be based upon empirical studies of the relative fre-

quency with which reviews of that kind occur on amazon.com. Such studies, I

am quite sure, would show that the estimates I offered (of 1/2 or of 1/5 to

the tenth power) were extremely conservative and the improbability of such a

series of reviews of that kind happening "by chance" is even far more remote.

BIETER'S REVIEW:

FETZERclaimsDEBUNK, June 6, 2005

Reviewer: Thomas J. Bieter "legal philosopher" (Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my

reviews

The assassination claim in this book has been vigorously contested in a

discussion forum founded by me:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FETZERclaimsDEBUNK

In David Ray's Griffin's review of "American Assassination" above, Griffin

concludes: "The authors conclude that the evidence shows beyond reasonable doubt

that Wellstone was assassinated. They have, in my view, made a convincing case."

But in his recent Message #1756 in the above forum, Professor Fetzer conceded:

"Bieter is right, the evidence is not sufficiently detailed and specific to

bring an indictment in a court of law."

An indictment (the legal document accusing the defendant of having committed a

crime) is legally sufficient if it based upon "probable cause". Probable cause

is a much lower standard of proof than the standard "proof beyond a reasonable

doubt," which is required to convict the defendant of the crime charged.

In Professor Fetzer's above concession, he actually concedes more and he

directly contradicts the conclusion attributed to him by Mr. Griffin in the

latter's review above.

Professor Fetzer uses a scientific mode of reasoning (inference to the best

explanation) in his presentation of evidence and argument. I contend, however,

that a conspiracy theory alleging the commission of a crime, is properly

evaluated under a jurisprudential model of analysis, i.e. criminal law and

procedure.

I'm a retired lawyer and former lecturer in the philosophy of law.

In my opinion, interested parties should read "American Assassination"

carefully, but also evaluate the author's claim under the jurisprudential model

of analysis (Messages#1755 and #1757) which is described in the above discussion

forum, before the reader makes a final judgment on the validity of the authors'

claim.

Thomas J. Bieter

Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)

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Visit your group "FETZERclaimsDEBUNK" on the web.

Edited by James H. Fetzer
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  • 2 weeks later...
New research on the death of Paul Wellstone:

It was a pleasure to appear on The Mike Malloy Show on airamericaradio.com for an interview about the death of Senator Paul Wellstone. The interview was archived and can be found by scrolling down to Friday, 12 August 2005:

http://www.whiterosesociety.org/Malloy.html

Additional new evidence about the case has appeared in an article co-authored with John P. Costella, Ph.D., "The NTSB Failed Wellstone", published in fromthewilderness.com on 6 July 2005 and subsequently in FROM THE WILDER-

NESS (31 July 2005), pp. 15-22. It has now become available on line at the following link:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/...wellstone.shtml

Paul Wellstone, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born in Washington, on 21st July, 1944. After high school he attended the University of North Carolina, where he obtained a BA (1965) and a doctorate in political science (1969). As a student he was active in the anti-Vietnam War campaign.

Wellstone taught at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, for twenty-five years. He was also director of the Minnesota Community Energy Program.

A member of the Democratic Party, Wellstone helped organize support for Jessie Jackson during his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988. He remained active in politics and in 1990 Wellstone defeated the Republican Rudy Boschwitz to win a seat in the Senate. In 1996 he beat Boschwitz by a larger margin.

Wellstone developed a reputation as the most left-wing member of the Senate. He supported gun control, abortion rights and was a strong opponent of military intervention in Iraq.

Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash d on 25th October, 2002 during an election campaign. His wife of nearly 40 years, Shelia Ison, and their 33-year-old daughter Marcia, also died in the accident. Wellstone's replacement, Walter Mondale, was defeated by the Republican, Norm Coleman, in the November, 2002 Senate election.

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Since Professor Fetzer has been kind enough to bring to your attention my review of his latest book I will let the reader determine to what the phrase "intellectual rubbish" should apply. My replies to Professor Fetzer are in caps.

Intellectual rubbish about AMERICAN ASSASSINATION posted on amazon.com.

Compare what he says here with the contents of the book and with information

that can be found at the sources cited above or at assassinationscience.com.

My comments appear here [between the brackets]. This is a good example of

a hatchet job whose misguided author has no respect for logic or for evidence

by authoring a review that trades upon the ignorance and gullibility of readers.

Josiah Thompson (Bolinas, California USA)

American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone by Four

Arrows and Jim Fetzer

Edition: Paperback

Price: $11.20

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

15 used from $9.05

2 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

More tabloid nonsense from Fetzer and friend.., August 5, 2005

The two co-authors parade their Ph.D.s in philosophy and education to make you

believe they are serious analysts. They aren't. Neither has ever piloted an

aircraft and their analysis shows that they know butkus about aviation.

[Four Arrows holds both a Ph.D. and an Ed.D. and has authored about a dozen

more books that Josiah Thompson, who is making a career of trashing books

that I have edited. (See his other reviews on amazon.com.) I piloted a jet as

a midshipman while I was in college. [FETZER NEVER "PILOTED A JET" IN HIS LIFE. THIS IS HILARIOUS! DURING NROTC SUMMER CAMP, HE WAS TAKEN UP IN A JET BY A REAL PILOT. FORTY YEARS LATER HE ATTEMPTS TO USE THIS SPUN FACT TO PERSUADE US THAT HE KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT AVIATION. HE DOESN'T AND HIS BOOK DEMONSTRATES THIS.] There is ample evidence of knowledge of aviation and expert contributions distributed throughout our research. This is an example of the genetic fallacy. Would an author have to have committed murder to write about it? Read the book and you will see the distortion in this passage.] [iF YOU ARE WRITING A BOOK ON THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER IT MIGHT BE USEFUL TO KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT HOW NUCLEAR REACTORS ARE BUILT AND IN PARTICULAR HOW THE CHERNOBYL REACTOR WAS BUILT. NO??]

ITEM: Fetzer claims it is a sinister fact that communication with the Wellstone

plane was suddenly lost. It wasn't. During its approach, the Wellstone plane

made all its expected communications checks. There never was any interruption in

communication with the plane.

[There was no distress call, even though the plane--whose passengers included

a US Senator, his wife and daughter, and three aides--was going down in a

remote, swampy area where the rapid arrival of first responders might make

the difference between life and death. There were two pilots. He is committing

a fallacy of equivocation by playing with words. That the copilot, who had handled

most of the communications, did not send a distress call suggests he sent no call

because communications were disabled and he was unable to send out a call.] [COMMUNICATION WAS NOT "SUDDENLY INTERRUPTED" BECAUSE NO COMMUNICATION WITH THE AIRCRAFT WAS IN PROGRESS OR EXPECTED. THE FACT THAT NO DISTRESS CALL WAS SENT OUT DOES NOT MEAN THAT COMMUNICATIONS WERE "DISABLED" OR THAT THE PILOTS WERE "UNABLE" TO SEND OUT A CALL. HAVING COME OUT OF THE OVERCAST LOW AND SLOW, THE PILOTS WERE TOO BUSY TRYING TO SAVE THEIR LIVES TO SEND OUT A DISTRESS CALL. IF FETZER KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT STATISTICS REGARDING SMALL PLANE CRASHES, HE WOULD KNOW THAT NO DISTRESS CALLS ARE MADE IN 70% OF THE CASES. BUT HE DOESN'T, SO HE MAKES UP HIS OWN INTERPRETATIONS.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims it is a sinister fact that the plane's propellers were found

to be not giving much thrust to the aircraft at the time of the crash. He's

right about the propellers not providing much thrust but wrong about this fact

being in any way sinister. The NTSB studied the propellers and found they were

in the "flight idle position" at the time of the crash. This setting would not

provide much thrust since the pilots in their approach were reducing their

airspeed in advance of landing. It was the proper and normal setting for

propellers in an approach.

[This is a nice example of "spinning" by trying to turn vice into virtue. Since

the plane was in distress, the pilots would be expected to "power up" and get out

of trouble, which is exactly what happened during the NTSB's own simulations.

They were unable to bring the plane down, even when it was flown abnormally

slowly. They were not landing. The field was miles to the north from where they

were. This remark displays either massive ignorance or deliberate deception.] [THE PLANE WAS IN ITS APPROACH PATTERN TO LAND AT EVELETH. IT WAS LANDING! FETZER CAN SAY ANYTHING HE WANTS BUT FACTS ARE FACTS.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims that FBI agents from Minneapolis got to the crash site too

early and hence must have had foreknowledge of the impending accident. The

agents weren't from Minneapolis. They were field agents from the area ordered

into the crash site by radio when it happened.

[Rick Wahlberg, the Sheriff of St. Louis County, reported that he had arrived at

the airport at 1:30 PM and saw agents he knew personally from the St. Paul FBI

"rapid response team". Gary Ulman, the airport assistant manager, confirmed to

me that they had been there at least since 1 PM. Paul McCable, the spokesman

for the FBI, said they had not arrived before 3:30 PM, contradicting both Wahlberg

and Ulman. These agents were not in the area at the time, as Christopher Bollyn

of amercianfreepress.com confirmed at the time. Thompson is making all this up.][FETZER IS NOT MAKING THIS UP. HE IS SIMPLY PUTTING TOGETHER CONFUSING EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY WITH MISTAKEN REPORTS FROM THE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA. THE TRUTH IS THAT TWO FIELD AGENTS FROM THE EVELETH-BEMIDJI REGION WERE CONTACTED BY RADIO AND DIRECTED TO THE CRASH SITE. THEY ARRIVED FIRST. ONLY MUCH LATER DID AGENTS FROM MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL GET THERE. FACTS ARE JUST FACTS AND FETZER CANNOT CHANGE THEM.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims that a secret electromagnetic pulse weapon downed the plane.

He claims to know this because a cell phone in the area malfunctioned at about

the time of the crash! First, no such weapon is known to exist. Second, the guy

whose cell phone malfunctioned was named John Ongaro. Back in June 2003, Kevin

Diaz, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, found Ongaro and talked to

him. Diaz wrote on 6/3/03: "Ongaro, who was near the airport when Wellstone's

plane went down, has dismissed the significance of his experience, in which he

said his cell phone made 'strange sounds and then disconnected. It's not unusual

for cell phones, especially in northern Minnesota,' he said."

[There are lots of reports about RF, EM, and HERF weaponry, so Thomson has to

be "pulling our leg". Truly disgusting. Just go onto google and you can find lots

of information about them. [bY THE SAME TOKEN, YOU CAN FIND MUCH THE SAME SORT OF THING BY ENTERING GOOGLE WITH "LOCH NESS MONSTER." FETZER CANNOT CITE EVEN ONE ARTICLE ANYWHERE WHICH DEMONSTRATES THE ACTUAL EXISTENCE OF THE KIND OF WEAPON HE'S TALKING ABOUT.] An expert on EM, who holds a Ph.D. in physics with a specialty in electromagnetism, contributed a section about them to the book. [THIS IS FETZER PAL AND AUSTRALIAN HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER, JOHN COSTELLA. TWO YEARS AGO, COSTELLA MISTOOK THE RAIN SENSORS WHICH CONTROL THE SPRINKLERS IN DEALEY PLAZA FOR "LISTENING DEVICES" PLACED THERE BY INTELLIGENCE SERVICES. ENOUGH SAID?!] Apparently Thompson thinks he possesses more knowledge than experts in the field. They can take out all computerized components, including stall warning systems, the course deviation indicator and communications, as well as disabling electrical components, such as the electrical switches that control the pitch of the props. The fire burned bluish-white rather than sooty-black, which indicates that it was electrical in origin. The fire department could not put it out, but the NTSB says nothing to explain it. The use of a weapon of this kind would explain the loss of communications and the loss of control, the smoke and the fire, and a number of other oddities about the crash, including the odd cell phone anomaly that John Ongaro experienced en route to the funeral that was bringing Wellstone into the area. While Ongaro did later seek to minimize the significance of his experience, he was quite alarmed about it at the time and strongly believed it could be connected to the crash. We all know witnesses can be pressured into changing their mind. Read the book for the emails he sent to me at the time, here his words contradict Thompson's account. This guy is counting on a naive audience to simply accept his review and not compare it to the book's contents.] [sO ONGARO IS PRESSURED INTO CHANGING HIS STORY? THE MALFUNCTION OF A CELL PHONE PROVES NOTHING ANYWAY. ALL THE REST OF THESE CLAIMS HAVE BEEN DISPROVEN BUT FETZER, LIKE THE ENERGIZER BUNNY, KEEPS MAKING THEM.]

The list of factual mistakes could be virtually infinitely expanded. These two

show about as much care in their research as a pair of reporters for the

National Enquirer writing about three-headed twins! They take advantage of the

fact that no one is going to take the trouble to look at the carefully

researched and documented NTSB report on the crash. That report shows in

exquisite detail that the crash was caused by the airplane getting ahead of two

flaky pilots. As another reviewer of this book has mentioned, the radar track of

the plane shows that it dropped out of the overcast low and slow and slightly

off course. In trying to remedy these problems, the air crew got behind on what

was happening and the plane stalled out at too low an altitude to recover. No

sinister elements in all of this. Just ineptitude.

[The plane was exceptional, the weather was fine, and the pilots were well-

qualified. Richard Conry, the primary pilot, had 5,200 hours of experience

and an Air Transport Pilot's rating, the highest commercial rating. PLUS he

had passed his FAA flight check just two days before the fatal flight. By the

government's own standards, he was highly qualified to fly this plane. Even

the NTSB's own simulation evidence contradicted its own findings. A member

of the NTSB team, Richard Healing, who signed the report, admitted that they

had no idea what had happened and were merely "speculating". The NTSB is

not permitted to investigate a crash scene as a "crime scene" unless the US

Attorney General declares it to be the scene of a crime. That was not done

in this case. Anyone who wants to know the skinny about Wellstone has to

go beyond hatchet-job reviews by hack writers to the serious and informed

studies of the case, including the book but also more recent work that may

be found at http://www.assassinationscience.com and links given above.] [JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING IN THIS PARAGRAPH HAS ALREADY BEEN PROVEN FALSE IN EXTENDED DEBATE WITH FETZER ON A YAHOO BOARD CALLED "FETZERclaimsDEBUNK" WHOSE URL IS: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FETZERclaimsDEBUNK/messages>. MY FINAL COMMENT: "THE LIST OF FACTUAL MISTAKES COULD BE VIRTUALLY INFINITELY EXPANDED. THESE TWO SHOW ABOUT AS MUCH CARE IN THEIR RESEARCH AS A PAIR OF REPORTERS FOR THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER WRITING ABOUT THREE-HEADED TWINS! THEY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE FACT THAT NO ONE IS GOINT TO TAKE THE TROUBLE TO LOOK AT THE CAREFULLY RESEARCHED AND DOCUMENTED NTSB REPORT ON THE CRASH"

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Hello,

Except for Josiah, Craig and Fetzer I don't think any of you know who I am. Greetings to one and all!

Fetzer knows me all too well! On the Yahoo forum mentioned by Tink. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FETZERclaimsDEBUNK/ . One or two other people and I poked so many holes in his claims about the Wellstone case there that he fled. Come back Jim, we miss you!

His facts have almost all been spun, taken out of context or just plain made up.

I am so sure the facts are in my favor and that I hereby challenge him to a debate on the issue. I pasted a challenge I made to him on the Yahoo board below.

I hope he has enough courage to debate me here!

From: "Leonard"

Date: Mon Sep 5, 2005 9:38 am

Subject: Fetzer - I challenge you to a debate about the Wellstone case!

I think I'll be stateside Thanksgiving week [arriving the weekend

before and going back the weekend after]. I should be back in July

[2006].

The two of us being in the same location would be ideal but not

necessary. Black Ops would be a possibility but I would have to know

who was engineering and who the moderator was before hand to make

sure I was not "conspired" against.

If we were to debate over an Internet link there would be no reason to

wait for me to be in the US but I would still prefer a situation where

the moderator, you and I are all in the same location.

Len

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Guest James H. Fetzer

Before I comment on Josiah's latest drivel, perhaps I should explain

some of the background to this and many other exchanges between

us. In 1996, I was invited by JFK Lancer to organize and moderate

a symposium on the authenticity of the Zapruder film. I invited a

dozen of the best people I knew (and added a few others, whom I

had not initially considered appropriate) at the request of Deborah

Conway, who was then co-owner of JFK Lancer. I conducted a 10

1/2 hour workshopt that day and the following day invited five or

six of them to make presentations during a 4 1/2 hour symposium.

A great deal of evidence was produced that the film does not seem

to be genuine. Josiah Thompson took umbrage over this event and

for nearly ten years now has been conducting a one-man vendetta

against me, presumably because our results implied that his book,

SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), was based upon a fake film. This

is especially ironic that this should be the case, since he had access

to the film at TIME/LIFE and an agreement that he would be allowed

to print frames from the film, which became the subject of a lawsuit

when TIME/LIFE refused to let him print the actual frames, causing

the publisher to use charcoal sketches instead. (The lawsuit may be

found in the journal assassinationresearch.com available on line.)

Thompson would prevail and, in a second edition of his book, which

appeared in 1976, he was permitted to use the frames. He was for

a brief period of time lionized in the research community for advanc-

ing the theory that three assassins fired four shots during the after-

noon of 22 November 1963, an account that was reported in such

magazines as THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. By March 1970, in

the journal COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION, however, a far super-

ior analysis of the photographic evidence appeared that was written

by Richard Sprague, who concluded that there had been even more

shots and more shooters, an analysis that, unlike Thompson's, has

withstood the test of time and appears to be far closer to the truth.

In any case, Thompson began to attack me, first coyly inviting me

to appear during a session he was offering with Arthur Snyder at

JFK Lancer in 1998. I played along, but explained explicity to the

audience (during my participation) that this was clearly a set-up to

give them the opportunity to attack me while I was there as the

proverbial "straight man". And that's what occurred. Interestingly,

on the same occasion, they requested that I ask Jack White if he

could bring along his DVD player, which I passed along to Jack.

By sheerest coincidence, during the meeting, someone broke into

Jack's vehicle and stole his DVD player. The probabilities of this

happening by chance are virtually infinitesimal, but here I simply

invite you to draw your own conclusions. He did it. He was hit.

Since then, I have had many nasty exchanges with this guy, who

appears to live in fear that the world is going to figure out that he

was taken in by a phony strip of celluloid, even though he could,

at that point in time, claim to have been one of the, if not the, lead-

ing expert on the film. In the meanwhile, I have chaired or co-

chaired four conferences on the death of JFK--Minneapolis (1999),

Dallas (2000), Dallas (2001), and Duluth (2003). The last of these

was devoted to the Zapruder film, and he did everything he could

to subvert the meeting, including persuading Rollie Zavada, who

is a leading Kodak expert on the kind of film that Zapruder alleg-

edly used, not to attend. Our results were nontheless definitive,

but it would have been a good thing if Zavada had been there, too.

One of the very curious aspects of his career is that Thompson

has admitted in public to having stolen a copy of the film from

TIME/LIFE. Anyone who doubts should read his statement to

the Assassination Records Review Board, which I published in

THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). And anyone who

questions whether I might be exaggerating about his vendetta

has only to consult amazon.com. In the 40 years since SIX

SECONDS appeared, Josiah Thompson has published exactly

four reviews on amazon.com. By sheer coincidence, I have

published four books. Those are the only ones he has ever

reviewed! And consider the quality of those reviews. Each of

them is a typical Thompson-style hatchet job. Just read them!

When a local attorney initiated a web site for the purpose of

attacking my research on the death of Senator Paul Wellstone,

I knew it was only a matter of time before Josiah showed up.

I was not disappointed. He and a bizarre assortment of others,

including one self-described former official with NSA, have been

attacking me for years, all to no avail. (That includes a fellow

who has posted here as though we knew each other, when all

I know of him is that he has put up some scurrilous posts on

that web site.) Anyone who wants to trace the history of our

exchanges over the Wellstone book can go to the Bieter site,

FETZERclaimsDEBUNK@yahoogroups.com, and review them.

By now there are over 2000 posts, most of them quite nasty.

So I can't be very excited that Thompson has now shown up

here to invect his venom. Typically, he has not read the book

or new work that I have undertaken. For example, the book,

AMERICAN ASSASSINATION (2004), was co-authored by a

native American scholar, Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs. Some-

how his participation in all this never shows up in the flurry

of attack. Additional new evidence about the case has now

been published in fromthewilderness.com on 6 July 2005 and

subsequently in FROM THE WILDERNESS (31 July 2005). My

coauthor in this case is John P. Costella, who happens to have

an earned Ph.D. in physics with a specialization in electro-

magnetism. Notice how Thompson, who earns his living as

a private detective, tries again and again to belittle him, as

though having expertise in a subject were a negative trait.

Our paper, which studies the discrepances between the NTSB's

final report and the multiple reports on which it was based, is at

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/...wellstone.shtml

Thompson refers again and again to the NTSB's FINAL REPORT,

without explaining that in the book I co-authored with Four Arrows

and in the study I co-authored with John Costella the NTSB's

FINAL REPORT has been dismembered, piece by piece. In his

typical style, he does not observe that, Richard Healing, a mem-

ber of the NTSB team that wrote the report, admitted that they

had no idea what caused the crash and were merely speculating.

That is not the kind of information you will ever acquire from him.

Most recently, I appeared on the Mike Malloy Show on airamerica-

radio.com for an interview about the death of Senator Wellstone.

I explained that we are continuing to make discoveries related to

the crash, the latest being evidence that GPS data may have been

manipulated to bring the plane into the "kill zone", precisely as JFK

was driven into the "kill zone" in Dallas by rerouting the motorcade.

The interview was archived and can be found by scrolling down to

Friday, 12 August 2005 http://www.whiterosesociety.org/Malloy.html

Since this is supposed to be a research forum, I suggest that any of

you who are interested in these issues should consult the sources I

have cited and make an assessment of the adequacy of Thompson's

rebuttal to my comments on his critique. Simply put, it is pathetic.

Let me offer one stunning example that sheds light upon his modus

operandi. He wants to discredit the claim, originally reported by

Christopher Bollyn on americanfreepress.com, that the FBI arrived

early on the scene. The Sheriff of St. Louis County, Rick Wahlberg,

for example, reported that, when he arrived at the airport at 1:30 PM,

he saw agents he knew personally from the FBI Rapid Response Team

in St. Paul, who told him they had been there since noon. I confirmed

with the airport assistant manager, Gary Ulman, who discovered the

crash site, that they had been there at least since 1 PM, but that he

had been too busy on the phone to notice more precisely when they

showed up. Thompson, in rebuttal, claims that they were agents who

were in the area at the time and were directed to the airport, while

also accepting Paul McCabe's claim they had not shown until 3:30!

Observe the absurdity of Thompson's position. On the one hand, he

says they were in the area and were directed to show up, which means

they were not late in arriving. According to McCabe, however, they

did not arrive until 3:30, which means they were late. Which is it?

Either way, Thompson's position is contradicted by the reports of the

St. Louis County Sheriff, who knew them personally, and by Gary Ul-

man's recollections. He can't have it both ways, but he tries. This is

a typical instance of the research capabilities of Josiah Thompson, like

his endorsement of the "CAREFULLY RESEARCHED AND DOCUMENTED

REPORT OF THE NTSB ON THE CRASH"! Those are Thompson's words,

not mine, but they make it all too painfully apparent that he has not

even read the study co-authored by Costella and me. He is a fraud.

During a very recent appearance on Black Op Radio (blackopradio.com),

I mentioned in passing that I had entertained doubts about which side of the

street Josiah Thompson was working and that, if anyone was unsure, they

should visit amazon.com and read the reviews he has posted there of the

books ASSASSINATION SCIENCE, MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA, and THE

GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX. In response I received the following email

from a listener, whose name I am deleting to preserve his privacy. I know

all too well the kind of insults and harassment that can accrue in retaliation

for raising issues of this kind and expressing your candid opinion. I have

in the past suggested that, if Thompson is not a disinformation agent, then

he certainly acts as if he were one. In this case, as you will now discover,

Vincent Salandria and I both hold opinions about Thompson that converge.

----- Forwarded message from taylorp@telus.net -----

Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 12:44:41 -0700

From:

Reply-To:

Subject: re Tink Thompson

To: Jim Fetzer <jfetzer@d.umn.edu>

Apropos of your comments on BlackOp Radio last Thursday, I recalled that Vincent Salandria had expressed some suspicions re Tink Thompson (page 223 of 244) in a letter to a mamber of a group devoted to analyzing the assassination of JFK. I printed the correspondence on 09/11/01 from the following web site:

http://www.geocities.com/mdmorrissey/sal2web.htm [NOTE: Other valuable

correspondence about the assassination by Salandria is available via this link.

An interesting biographical sketch, which includes cricitism, may be found at

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/The_critics/S...landriabio.html. It may also be

worth observing, however, that this site is maintained by one Ken Rahn.]

VS (4/7/2000)

John, you are inquiring about the accuracy of Josiah Thompson's description in 1995 at the COPA conference of how we came to meet one another.

Thompson's account here is right about my being called by the ACLU to go to the suburbs to see what I could do to get Thompson and another group of peace people out of jail. His embellishments made at the 1998 COPA speaking engagement are wrong. I was not the brilliant lawyer that he described me as in his 1998 COPA speech. Rather, I talked quietly to the police, and mystery of mystery they let the whole group out without an argument. Having spent years trying to extricate peace people from jails, I was amazed that to find that I never had an easier time in getting peace people freed from the grips of our Cold-War infected police. I now wonder whether the whole meeting with Thompson was not a set up. You will recall that in my 1998 COPA speech that the ACLU extracted a resignation from me because of my assassination work. Do you think that the ACLU was in the service of the Mafia or the Secret Team?

In contrast to this easy time that I had in rescuing Thompson and his associates from the police, compare what happened to me when I rescued a kid from the clutches of the police in Philadelphia while Arlen Specter was the District Attorney. The young many (sic), the night before he was drafted into the military, was walking down a Philadelphia street wearing a tie which resembled an American flag. Officer Brown arrested him for disorderly conduct. His psychiatrist father called me late at night to see what I could do. I went to the Round House in Philadelphia where a Philadelphia magistrate heard the matter. I pointed out to the magistrate that the young man was doing nothing other than exercising his first amendment rights. The magistrate agreed. The District Attorney, with whom I was friendly, made no objection. The young man walked.

On the way out I remarked to Officer Brown in a polite fashion that he should respect the first amendment to our constitution. Whereupon, he and his colleague went to the only exit to the Round House and bracketed the door. I knew what that meant. So I waited patiently until the Assistant D.A., Charles Bernsee came out of court. I pointed the two police officers to Bernsee. I asked him what I should do. He said, "Leave, I am here."

As I tried to ease my way through the door, the police seized me. They ripped my rain coat and carried me over to a wall smashing me against it. I asked them to bring me before the magistrate. They obliged. They charged me with assaulting police officers and resisting arrest. I was handcuffed, hands in the back, and spent the night in jail.

Arlen Specter continued the prosecution. I got a high-priced civil rights and anti-trust lawyer, Henry Sawyer, IIIrd, to represent me. Eventually, the matter was dismissed, because I had witnesses to the episode. Bernsee never said a word in my defense. He was no doubt under orders from his boss, Arlen Specter.

I sued the City of Philadelphia. The high-priced lawyer, to whom I had paid $l,600.00 in fees, was willing to accept $50.00 in payment of my rain coat from the City. I fired him. Later, prior to trial, I accepted $800.00 in settlement. I did not feel like pressing the matter, other than to bring decent closure to it. That my friends was how Salandria was treated. Thompson's treatment was different. I relate the above incident to show you that Salandria was not that as brilliant as (sic) a lawyer as Thompson reported. Something other than my brilliance sprang Thompson and his friends with such ease. I ask, do you think that maybe the Mafia or the Secret Team forced Specter to prosecute me?

John, Thompson is absolutely wrong when he says that "...the two were soon collaborating on new articles." We were not collaborating on "articles." Rather, we were collaborating on the book which turned out to be Six Seconds in Dallas.

I quit immediately when Thompson tried to convince me that the Kennedy throat wound was a consequence of a bit of bone exiting from the throat which emanated from the head hit. I told Thompson that I would not be associated with a work which left open to the government contrary to fact a means of extricating itself from the need for a single-bullet theory in order to comport with a three-shot assassination. I saw him as possibly at some future time seeking to help the government to explain away its dire ammunition shortage if and when the single-bullet fantasy was thoroughly discredited.

I became immediately suspicious of Thompson, because I thought that he might have represented an effort for the government to ease me into the major media and get me gradually over to being ultimately one of their critics. Later, as I have previously reported, after Six Seconds in Dallas was published, I invited him over to my home for a party.

At the affair, I put to him how he could have written the last paragraph of "Six Seconds" which concluded with the question of what does all of this prove? He answered his question by flatly stating that it did not prove a conspiracy.

"Tink, how could you write that?" I asked him.

He answered: "An error in exposition, Vince. An error in exposition."

After comparing notes with Ray Marcus about, he and I concluded that Thompson was an agent. I so advised Thompson of my feeling in writing. Please note, that when I call someone an agent, I do so quite openly and don't deny it. John, you have my correspondence on this matter.

Now, so many years later, Thompson's "error in exposition" is converted into another explanation. Thompson currently describes himself as an agnostic on the issue of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination.

We also know from the government documents that he was approached for possible employment by the CIA prior to the assassination.

_________________________________________

Since Professor Fetzer has been kind enough to bring to your attention my review of his latest book I will let the reader determine to what the phrase "intellectual rubbish" should apply.  My replies to Professor Fetzer are in caps.

Intellectual rubbish about AMERICAN ASSASSINATION posted on amazon.com.

Compare what he says here with the contents of the book and with information

that can be found at the sources cited above or at assassinationscience.com.

My comments appear here [between the brackets]. This is a good example of

a hatchet job whose misguided author has no respect for logic or for evidence

by authoring a review that trades upon the ignorance and gullibility of readers.

Josiah Thompson (Bolinas, California USA)

American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone by Four

Arrows and Jim Fetzer

Edition: Paperback

Price: $11.20

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

15 used from $9.05

2 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

More tabloid nonsense from Fetzer and friend.., August 5, 2005

The two co-authors parade their Ph.D.s in philosophy and education to make you

believe they are serious analysts. They aren't. Neither has ever piloted an

aircraft and their analysis shows that they know butkus about aviation.

[Four Arrows holds both a Ph.D. and an Ed.D. and has authored about a dozen

more books that Josiah Thompson, who is making a career of trashing books

that I have edited. (See his other reviews on amazon.com.) I piloted a jet as

a midshipman while I was in college. [FETZER NEVER "PILOTED A JET" IN HIS LIFE.  THIS IS HILARIOUS!  DURING NROTC SUMMER CAMP, HE WAS TAKEN UP IN A JET BY A REAL PILOT.  FORTY YEARS LATER HE ATTEMPTS TO USE THIS SPUN FACT TO PERSUADE US THAT HE KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT AVIATION.  HE DOESN'T AND HIS BOOK DEMONSTRATES THIS.] There is ample evidence of knowledge of aviation and expert contributions distributed throughout our research. This is an example of the genetic fallacy. Would an author have to have committed murder to write about it? Read the book and you will see the distortion in this passage.] [iF YOU ARE WRITING A BOOK ON THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER IT MIGHT BE USEFUL TO KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT HOW NUCLEAR REACTORS ARE BUILT AND IN PARTICULAR HOW THE CHERNOBYL REACTOR WAS BUILT.  NO??]

ITEM: Fetzer claims it is a sinister fact that communication with the Wellstone

plane was suddenly lost. It wasn't. During its approach, the Wellstone plane

made all its expected communications checks. There never was any interruption in

communication with the plane.

[There was no distress call, even though the plane--whose passengers included

a US Senator, his wife and daughter, and three aides--was going down in a

remote, swampy area where the rapid arrival of first responders might make

the difference between life and death. There were two pilots. He is committing

a fallacy of equivocation by playing with words. That the copilot, who had handled

most of the communications, did not send a distress call suggests he sent no call

because communications were disabled and he was unable to send out a call.] [COMMUNICATION WAS NOT "SUDDENLY INTERRUPTED" BECAUSE NO COMMUNICATION WITH THE AIRCRAFT WAS IN PROGRESS OR EXPECTED.  THE FACT THAT NO DISTRESS CALL WAS SENT OUT DOES NOT MEAN THAT COMMUNICATIONS WERE "DISABLED" OR THAT THE PILOTS WERE "UNABLE" TO SEND OUT A CALL.  HAVING COME OUT OF THE OVERCAST LOW AND SLOW, THE PILOTS WERE TOO BUSY TRYING TO SAVE THEIR LIVES TO SEND OUT A DISTRESS CALL.  IF FETZER KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT STATISTICS REGARDING SMALL PLANE CRASHES, HE WOULD KNOW THAT NO DISTRESS CALLS ARE MADE IN 70% OF THE CASES.  BUT HE DOESN'T, SO HE MAKES UP HIS OWN INTERPRETATIONS.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims it is a sinister fact that the plane's propellers were found

to be not giving much thrust to the aircraft at the time of the crash. He's

right about the propellers not providing much thrust but wrong about this fact

being in any way sinister. The NTSB studied the propellers and found they were

in the "flight idle position" at the time of the crash. This setting would not

provide much thrust since the pilots in their approach were reducing their

airspeed in advance of landing. It was the proper and normal setting for

propellers in an approach.

[This is a nice example of "spinning" by trying to turn vice into virtue. Since

the plane was in distress, the pilots would be expected to "power up" and get out

of trouble, which is exactly what happened during the NTSB's own simulations.

They were unable to bring the plane down, even when it was flown abnormally

slowly. They were not landing. The field was miles to the north from where they

were. This remark displays either massive ignorance or deliberate deception.] [THE PLANE WAS IN ITS APPROACH PATTERN TO LAND AT EVELETH.  IT WAS LANDING!  FETZER CAN SAY ANYTHING HE WANTS BUT FACTS ARE FACTS.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims that FBI agents from Minneapolis got to the crash site too

early and hence must have had foreknowledge of the impending accident. The

agents weren't from Minneapolis. They were field agents from the area ordered

into the crash site by radio when it happened.

[Rick Wahlberg, the Sheriff of St. Louis County, reported that he had arrived at

the airport at 1:30 PM and saw agents he knew personally from the St. Paul FBI

"rapid response team". Gary Ulman, the airport assistant manager, confirmed to

me that they had been there at least since 1 PM. Paul McCable, the spokesman

for the FBI, said they had not arrived before 3:30 PM, contradicting both Wahlberg

and Ulman. These agents were not in the area at the time, as Christopher Bollyn

of amercianfreepress.com confirmed at the time. Thompson is making all this up.][FETZER IS NOT MAKING THIS UP.  HE IS SIMPLY PUTTING TOGETHER CONFUSING EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY WITH MISTAKEN REPORTS FROM THE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA.  THE TRUTH IS THAT TWO FIELD AGENTS FROM THE EVELETH-BEMIDJI REGION WERE CONTACTED BY RADIO AND DIRECTED TO THE CRASH SITE.  THEY ARRIVED FIRST.  ONLY MUCH LATER DID AGENTS FROM MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL GET THERE.  FACTS ARE JUST FACTS AND FETZER CANNOT CHANGE THEM.]

ITEM: Fetzer claims that a secret electromagnetic pulse weapon downed the plane.

He claims to know this because a cell phone in the area malfunctioned at about

the time of the crash! First, no such weapon is known to exist. Second, the guy

whose cell phone malfunctioned was named John Ongaro. Back in June 2003, Kevin

Diaz, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, found Ongaro and talked to

him. Diaz wrote on 6/3/03: "Ongaro, who was near the airport when Wellstone's

plane went down, has dismissed the significance of his experience, in which he

said his cell phone made 'strange sounds and then disconnected. It's not unusual

for cell phones, especially in northern Minnesota,' he said."

[There are lots of reports about RF, EM, and HERF weaponry, so Thomson has to

be "pulling our leg". Truly disgusting. Just go onto google and you can find lots

of information about them. [bY THE SAME TOKEN, YOU CAN FIND MUCH THE SAME SORT OF THING BY ENTERING GOOGLE WITH "LOCH NESS MONSTER."  FETZER CANNOT CITE EVEN ONE ARTICLE ANYWHERE WHICH DEMONSTRATES THE ACTUAL EXISTENCE OF THE KIND OF WEAPON HE'S TALKING ABOUT.] An expert on EM, who holds a Ph.D. in physics with a specialty in electromagnetism, contributed a section about them to the book. [THIS IS FETZER PAL AND AUSTRALIAN HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER, JOHN COSTELLA.  TWO YEARS AGO, COSTELLA MISTOOK THE RAIN SENSORS WHICH CONTROL THE SPRINKLERS IN DEALEY PLAZA FOR "LISTENING DEVICES" PLACED THERE BY INTELLIGENCE SERVICES.  ENOUGH SAID?!] Apparently Thompson thinks he possesses more knowledge than experts in the field. They can take out all computerized components, including stall warning systems, the course deviation indicator and communications, as well as disabling electrical components, such as the electrical switches that control the pitch of the props. The fire burned bluish-white rather than sooty-black, which indicates that it was electrical in origin. The fire department could not put it out, but the NTSB says nothing to explain it. The use of a weapon of this kind would explain the loss of communications and the loss of control, the smoke and the fire, and a number of other oddities about the crash, including the odd cell phone anomaly that John Ongaro experienced en route to the funeral that was bringing Wellstone into the area. While Ongaro did later seek to minimize the significance of his experience, he was quite alarmed about it at the time and strongly believed it could be connected to the crash. We all know witnesses can be pressured into changing their mind. Read the book for the emails he sent to me at the time, here his words contradict Thompson's account. This guy is counting on a naive audience to simply accept his review and not compare it to the book's contents.] [sO ONGARO IS PRESSURED INTO CHANGING HIS STORY?  THE MALFUNCTION OF A CELL PHONE PROVES NOTHING ANYWAY.  ALL THE REST OF THESE CLAIMS HAVE BEEN DISPROVEN BUT FETZER, LIKE THE ENERGIZER BUNNY, KEEPS MAKING THEM.]

The list of factual mistakes could be virtually infinitely expanded. These two

show about as much care in their research as a pair of reporters for the

National Enquirer writing about three-headed twins! They take advantage of the

fact that no one is going to take the trouble to look at the carefully

researched and documented NTSB report on the crash. That report shows in

exquisite detail that the crash was caused by the airplane getting ahead of two

flaky pilots. As another reviewer of this book has mentioned, the radar track of

the plane shows that it dropped out of the overcast low and slow and slightly

off course. In trying to remedy these problems, the air crew got behind on what

was happening and the plane stalled out at too low an altitude to recover. No

sinister elements in all of this. Just ineptitude.

[The plane was exceptional, the weather was fine, and the pilots were well-

qualified. Richard Conry, the primary pilot, had 5,200 hours of experience

and an Air Transport Pilot's rating, the highest commercial rating. PLUS he

had passed his FAA flight check just two days before the fatal flight. By the

government's own standards, he was highly qualified to fly this plane. Even

the NTSB's own simulation evidence contradicted its own findings. A member

of the NTSB team, Richard Healing, who signed the report, admitted that they

had no idea what had happened and were merely "speculating". The NTSB is

not permitted to investigate a crash scene as a "crime scene" unless the US

Attorney General declares it to be the scene of a crime. That was not done

in this case. Anyone who wants to know the skinny about Wellstone has to

go beyond hatchet-job reviews by hack writers to the serious and informed

studies of the case, including the book but also more recent work that may

be found at http://www.assassinationscience.com and links given above.] [JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING IN THIS PARAGRAPH HAS ALREADY BEEN PROVEN FALSE IN EXTENDED DEBATE WITH FETZER ON A YAHOO BOARD CALLED "FETZERclaimsDEBUNK" WHOSE URL IS: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FETZERclaimsDEBUNK/messages>.  MY FINAL COMMENT: "THE LIST OF FACTUAL MISTAKES COULD BE VIRTUALLY INFINITELY EXPANDED.  THESE TWO SHOW ABOUT AS MUCH CARE IN THEIR RESEARCH AS A PAIR OF REPORTERS FOR THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER WRITING ABOUT THREE-HEADED TWINS!  THEY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE FACT THAT NO ONE IS GOINT TO TAKE THE TROUBLE TO LOOK AT THE CAREFULLY RESEARCHED AND DOCUMENTED NTSB REPORT ON THE CRASH"

So I invite everyone who is interested in this exchange to evaluate the evidence

for themselves and draw their own conclusions. But you might start by taking a

look at the four reviews Josiah Thompson has posted on amazon.com over the

past forty years. And bear in mind that ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998) has

eleven contributors, MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000) nine, and THE GREAT

ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2004) six. Yet this man does not have a kind word to

say about any of them, with perhaps one exception, Gary Aguilar, who happens

to collaborate with Josiah. Which gives you an inkling of the standards he uses

to evalute the work of others. All in all, this is a disgraceful performance and he

hopes you will be too dumb to put "2" and "2" together, because he is doing his

level best to draw the public away from important research on the death of JFK

and now on the crash that took the life of Minnesota's Senator Paul Wellstone.

Edited by James H. Fetzer
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Even the most casual reader can discern who is awash in vitriol... Fetzer or me.

When Fetzer cannot win an argument on the merits, he attacks the motives and character of those who disagree with him. The bare facts are that after ten years of trying to impugn the authenticity of the Zapruder film and other films taken in Dealey Plaza, Fetzer has failed. Having failed he has to impugn my character by publishing faded speculation by Vince Salandria from 40 years ago. All this is no more believable now than it was 40 years ago. When he cannot handle the scrupulous dismembering of his actual arguments, he claims that I have illegitimate motives in defending the authenticity of the film.... that I based my forty-year-old book on it and therefore defend the film now. My old book was based upon a review of all the evidence then available including much photo evidence from Dealey Plaza which I discovered in the Archives. I defend the authenticity of the Zapruder film not to defend my old book but because the film is authentic and Fetzer's arguments to impugn its authenticity become sillier the longer he keeps at it. It's simply a question of intellectual integrity, a quality one would think a professor of philosophy would value.

In discussing the Wellstone crash above in this thread, Fetzer says that while a midshipman he "piloted a jet" aircraft and hence has a knowledge of aviation. The reality is that a real pilot took him up in a jet for an exhibition flight while Fetzer was in college. Fetzer never "piloted a jet" and his claim that he did shows how truly looney-tunes he has become.

He fled another site set up to discuss the Wellstone crash and here, as usual, he means to substitute vitriol and an attempt at character assassination for argument.

I'm going on vacation. Professor Fetzer can remain stewing in his juices!!

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Even the most casual reader can discern who is awash in vitriol... Fetzer or me. 

When Fetzer cannot win an argument on the merits, he attacks the motives and character of those who disagree with him.  The bare facts are that after ten years of trying to impugn the authenticity of the Zapruder film and other films taken in Dealey Plaza, Fetzer has failed.  Having failed he has to impugn my character by publishing faded speculation by Vince Salandria from 40 years ago.  All this is no more believable now than it was 40 years ago.  When he cannot handle the scrupulous dismembering of his actual arguments, he claims that I have illegitimate motives in defending the authenticity of the film.... that I based my forty-year-old book on it and therefore defend the film now.  My old book was based upon a review of all the evidence then available including much photo evidence from Dealey Plaza which I discovered in the Archives.  I defend the authenticity of the Zapruder film not to defend my old book but because the film is authentic and Fetzer's arguments to impugn its authenticity become sillier the longer he keeps at it.  It's simply a question of intellectual integrity, a quality one would think a professor of philosophy would value.

In discussing the Wellstone crash above in this thread, Fetzer  says that while a midshipman he "piloted a jet" aircraft and hence has a knowledge of aviation.  The reality is that a real pilot took him up in a jet for an exhibition flight while Fetzer was in college.  Fetzer never "piloted a jet" and his claim that he did shows how truly looney-tunes he has become.

He fled another site set up to discuss the Wellstone crash and here, as usual, he means to substitute vitriol and an attempt at character assassination for argument. 

I'm going on vacation.  Professor Fetzer can remain stewing in his juices!!

I see you haven't lost your magical touch .... roflmao! Some things NEVER change

p.s. whatever happended to the revision of 6 Seconds we heard so much about, few years back?

DHealy

Edited by David G. Healy
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I believe Cheney stated publicly before the elections that it was the White House's #1 priority to remove Wellstone from the Senate. It's too, too curious that Minnesota elected the Senate's "most left wing member" and then returned him to office by an even wider margin in 1996 - and, then replaced him with the GOP's fastest rising star - Norm Coleman - who has already been appointed to many highly important committees in his first 3 years - garnering precious national "face-time" and applying his subtle right-wing guidence and pressure to the debates. He helped craft the legislation for the new National Intelligence Director and sat on the panel with the Senate 9/11 investigators. He is the Chairman of Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Narcotics Affairs, sits on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and the Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Nutition. This seems an amazing level of involvement and responsibility for such a junior member in his first thousand days. By electing Coleman, they changed course and rejected a favorite son, national Minnesota icon ex-Vice President with similar views to Wellstone and long-time statewide recognition and respect. Instead, they choose a right-winger - born in Brooklyn - only arrived in Minnesota in the early 90's? What were the poll numbers before the election? Would the electorate really reject Wellstone so conclusively after he had died in such suspicious circumstances with his young family and friends? There was a vicious media attack on his funeral - that it was a thinly veiled political rally. I'm sure that his friends and supporters shared his extremely liberal views and it was probably what bonded them throughout their lives. It was who he was and represented his greatest and most noble pursuits and accomplishments. The right-wing media is not welcome at such gatherings - with their attempts to skew and subvert the meaning and interpretation of such a gathering. The bigger issue is that of forcibly directing the course of American policy and political discussion through brute strength and immoral killings - the stealing of elections in the U.S. - and the scrupulous examination of the convergence of all the strategies that successfully perpetrate them.

"Dr. Franklin... what do we have?"

"A republic, my good woman... if you can KEEP it..."

Edited by JL Allen
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I believe Cheney stated publicly before the elections that it was the White House's #1 priority to remove Wellstone from the Senate.

I think this makes it less likely that he was 'whacked'. Killing him after stating publicly that they wanted to get rid of him so badly would draw too much attention, as indeed it did. At best it's a neutral tidbit.

Fetzer has yet to explain how killing Wellstone would have increased Coleman's chances of winning. As could be expected Mondale at first increased Wellstone's lead over Coleman. What got the Republican elected was not Wellstone dying and being replaced by the former VP but the disastrous Wellstone funeral/rally. This is clearly borne out by poll number in which a large number of independents said that it made them vote for the GOP candidate. We also can't ignore the possibility that the election was stolen

Norm Coleman - who has already been appointed to many highly important committees in his first 3 years ...He is the Chairman of Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Narcotics Affairs, sits on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and the Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Nutition.

Fetzer also indicated that this is some how sinister. I am not one to defend the Republican Senate leadership but are we to some how assume they were in on it? Have Fetzer or Allen looked at other 2002 GOP freshman senators to see if this was indeed unusual? I believe the Senate had stopped using seniority to decide chairmanships a few years before. Coleman is Chairman of two subcommittees Investigations and Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Narcotics Affairs. He worked 17 years in the Minnesota Attorney General’s office [1976 -1992] and 10 years as mayor of St. Paul [1993 - 2002, he was elected as a Democrat]. He also sits on 4 other comities [one of which is also law enforcement related]. First it has to shown that this unusual then that it has any bearing whatsoever.

...a right-winger - born in Brooklyn - only arrived in Minnesota in the early 90's?

Although he has since moved to the right, during the 2002 election he portrayed himself as a centrist. Coleman moved to Minnesota in 1976 after law school. In 1998 he and Hubert Humphrey III were beaten by Jesse Ventura in the Governor's race. Ironically Humphrey beat another son of a long term senator, one term VP and defeated presidential candidate "Chip" Mondale in the primaries.

Wellstone was born in Arlington Va. and moved to Minnesota in 1969 to teach at Carleton College after completing his doctorate at UNC-Chapel Hill. He was first elected to the Senate after having lived in Minnesota for 21 years, Coleman after having lived in the state 26 years. Both had been student radicals, Coleman was the leader of the SDS at Hofstra. In another irony Rudy Boschwitz, Wellstone's predecessor [1978 - 91] who he defeated twice [1990 and 96], like Wellstone and Coleman was Jewish and only came to the state after college.

What were the poll numbers before the election?

Wellstone was besting Coleman 47 - 41 in the last poll before he died. In the next poll Mondale increased the lead to 49 - 41. After the funeral/rally polls were mixed.

There was a vicious media attack on his funeral - that it was a thinly veiled political rally.

I agree the media over reacted the Republicans are spin masters but the Democrats were to blame also. People expected it to be a non-partisan event, several Republicans had come to pay their respects. Rick Kahn, Wellstone's longtime volunteer treasurer [not campaign manager as falsely reported by Fetzer], who gave the most offending speech admitted his mistake and apologised.

The bigger issue is that of forcibly directing the course of American policy and political discussion through brute strength and immoral killings - the stealing of elections in the U.S.

I agree there is strong evidence that the GOP is able to manipulate vote counts in their favor. How ever evidence that Wellstone was killed is like that old Elvis [Costello] song - "Less Than Zero"

Edited by Len Colby
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