Cc: nygreens
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 7:35 PM
Subject: PAST ARTICLES ON ANTI-WAR SEN. WELLSTONE (DEAD IN CRASH TODAY)
POURING IN AND PAINTING A VERY CLEAR PICTURE

"This legislation is terrible for working families and it rewards
the predatory and irresponsible lending by banks and credit card
companies which fed the crisis in the first place. For that reason,
a broad coalition of consumer groups, unions, women's and children's
groups, civil rights organizations, and religious groups have united
in opposition to this bill."   --Senator Paul Wellstone


ARTICLES ON WELLSTONE POURING IN AND PAINTING A VERY CLEAR PICTURE

"The man who began burning bridges with the Bush family when he
challenged then-President Bush's Persian Gulf War preparations on
their first meeting ("Who is this chickenshit?" Bush Sr. asked)

From the Nation, May 9, 2002:


http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020527&s=nichols

`Paul Wellstone is a hunted man.. not just another Democrat on White
House political czar Karl Rove's target list.. Rather, getting rid of
Wellstone is a passion for Rove, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush.. "There
are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking
about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone," a senior Republican aide
confides. "This one is political and personal for them."'
...
Myron Orfield, a Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) state
senator "If you take strong stands you put yourself at risk."
.....
"The man who began burning bridges with the Bush family when he
challenged then-President Bush's Persian Gulf War preparations on
their first meeting ("Who is this chickenshit?" Bush Sr. asked) may
be the Senate's boldest foe of the Star Wars national missile defense
program and of increased military aid to Colombia."
.....
"They have made it very clear that if they could beat one Democrat
this year, it would be Paul Wellstone," says Minnesota political
consultant Richman. "Paul gets under their skin." ......

"When I first met the President, he called me 'Pablo,'" Wellstone
jokes. "That lasted a day or two. Then they started trying to figure
out how they were going to get rid of me." .....

`Richman says, "They'll hit Paul from now until November--above the
belt and below the belt." `.....

Posted May 9, 2002


Mysterious Group Spends $1 Million on Anti-Wellstone Campaign
Published on Wednesday, October 23, 2002 by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

by Patricia Lopez

Americans for Job Security, a Virginia-based interest group that opposes the
reelection of Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, has made an unprecedented
$1 million ad buy that will fill the airwaves in the last two weeks before
the election, according to Wellstone campaign officials.

Campaign manager Jeff Blodgett said the buy is so large that it may equal
what Wellstone and Republican rival Norm Coleman and the two state parties
each are expected to spend on media in the closing weeks.
Blodgett said his biggest concern is that no one knows who funds the
mysterious group, which has found a legal loophole that apparently allows it
to keep its donors secret.

"In a state with a reputation for clean, transparent campaigns, this is an
outrage, that a group can come in and spend this kind of money and no one
knows who their donors are," Blodgett said at a Tuesday morning news
conference. "We demand to know. We ask Norm Coleman to join us in this."

Michael Dubke, president of Americans for Job Security, would neither
confirm nor deny the amount of the ad buy "because I don't want to play
their game," but said that "we're up [on TV] in Minneapolis, Duluth,
Rochester, Fargo and statewide with radio and let's just say Minnesota's not
an inexpensive state."
He said the group would have a "significant presence" on radio and TV over
the next two weeks. Dubke said he has made similar-size buys in South Dakota
and Missouri -- the two other states that are top targets in President
Bush's attempt to put Republicans in control of the U.S. Senate.

Dubke is unapologetic about the group's refusal to disclose its donors,
saying the decision is legal and is common among issue advocacy groups.

Coleman campaign manager Ben Whitney said Tuesday that Coleman would not be
contacting Dubke's group or asking it to disclose its donors.

Wellstone, he said, had benefited for months from ads run by liberal
interest groups. "He's getting money from radical groups like Council for a
Livable World -- and we don't know who its donors are -- and then he demands
that we ask someone else not to advertise in Minnesota because he doesn't
like what they're saying," Whitney said.

He noted that Coleman, at the beginning of the race, had offered Wellstone a
joint agreement to keep third-party money out of the race and that Wellstone
refused. "It's brazen hypocrisy and it leaves me kind of breathless,"
Whitney said.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School
of Communications, said the group's tactic is "the reason issue advocacy is
so problematic. You can disguise the nature of the group through a lovely
sounding name."

Jamieson, a national expert on political ads, said the sheer magnitude of
such an ad buy could change the course of the election.

"Large amounts of money from a third-party group late in a tight race can,
in fact, shift votes, unless the message is off-strategy," she said.

The high-buck, high-profile race has been one of the tightest in the
country, drawing celebrities and political luminaries from across the
nation, along with a raft of outside interest groups.
Americans for Job Security has been a player in the race since June, when it
began a round of radio ads that labeled Wellstone a "money-grubber" for his
opposition to a permanent repeal of the estate tax, which it calls the
"death tax."

A new TV ad criticizes Wellstone for taking special-interest money and for
breaking a promise not to run for a third term.

Blodgett said Tuesday that he was less concerned about the content of the
ads than the sheer magnitude of the buy, which he said might be the largest
ever by an outside group in a Minnesota race.
Little is known about Americans for Job Security, which is based in
Alexandria, Va., just outside Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1997 with a
$1 million contribution from the American Insurance Association, which Dubke
says is no longer associated with Americans for Job Security.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center Web site, which analyzes issue ads,
describes the group as a "tax-exempt, conservative, business-backed,
pro-Republican organization" that was an offshoot of a coalition of business
leaders who came together in 1996 to advocate against issues promoted by the
AFL-CIO.
Americans for Job Security has taken several unconventional tacks in this
race -- it flew a banner over the State Fair this summer asking Wellstone to
"stop taxing the dead." Its latest radio ad features a couple speaking in
English and Norwegian.

In the ad, Lloyd tells Ruth in Norwegian that Wellstone is a money-grubber
and should stop taxing the dead. "If he doesn't get it in English," Lloyd
says, "maybe he'll get it in Norwegian."
Dubke said the group is trying to "cut through the clutter."

"Our whole goal since June has been to energize the debate," he said. "I
think in American politics we don't have enough debate on public policy
issues. If we let [candidates] do what they wanted, we'd get a bunch of ads
telling us how much their mothers love them."
© Copyright 2002 Star Tribune
====================

Sherman Skolnick on
Secret History of Airplane Sabotage:
http://skolnicksreport.com/shistory.html
http://skolnicksreport.com/shistory2.html
http://skolnicksreport.com/shistory3.html
http://skolnicksreport.com/shistory4.html



=========================




To: Dick Eastman
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 2:50 PM
Subject: Re: [SeptemberDisaster] Wellstone plane crash -- Fw: Recent
Mysterious (political) Plane Crashes



Senator Paul Wellstone dies in Plane Crash




The Nation's David Corn. Mother Jones held him up as "the first 1960s
radical elected to the U.S. Senate." George Bush offered a more withering
assessment: "Who is this chickenshit?" he muttered after being grilled by
Wellstone at a reception for new members of Congress.
Background information :
Paul Wellstone is the Senator of Minnesota, and was in the race for the
elections as the Democratic candidate, until he got killed in a plane crash
near Eveleth, Minnesota, together with his wife, daughter, three staff
members and the crew of the plane.
Wellstone was known for his outspoken opposition to the Bush administration,
and was despised by the Whitehouse. Bush and Cheney have personally
interfered in selecting the Republican candidate to oppose Wellstone.
CNN - Senator, family members killed in Minnesota plane crash (25 Oct)

Bush isn't on the ballot, but his influence is
USA Today, April 28th, 2002
Tim Pawlenty, majority leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was
about to announce a challenge of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone last spring
when Cheney asked him not to run. That left the field clear for former St.
Paul mayor Norm Coleman, a candidate the White House believed had a better
chance of winning. Coleman was planning to run for governor before a call
from Bush persuaded him to switch races. Now Pawlenty is running for
governor.

War looms over Minn. race, but no one can say how
USA Today, September 24th, 2002
ST. PAUL - Democrat Paul Wellstone has spent 12 years in the Senate defying
political orthodoxy as a crusader for liberal causes. The rumpled former
college professor has cast difficult votes before, most notably his
opposition to welfare reform on the eve of his hard-fought 1996 re-election
campaign. But now, locked in one of the tightest Senate races in the nation,
Wellstone seems poised to take the biggest gamble of his career by defying
George W. Bush on Iraq.

A Similar Event happened in October 2000, relating to Democratic candidate
Mel Carnahan :
ABCNews - Missouri Governer dies in Plane Crash (17 October 2000)

From The Madison Capital Times :
Bush fears tenacious, popular Wellstone
(April 2001)
Most of them also asked a question: "How come Bush hates you so much?"
Let there be no doubt as to the identity of George W. Bush's least favorite
Democratic U.S. senator. It's Wellstone, the rabble-rousing Progressive who
represents not just Minnesota but what remains of the fighting populist
spirit of the Upper Midwest.

As Wellstone prepares to seek a third term next year, it would be reasonable
to assume that he might finally be in for some smooth political sailing. But
reasonableness doesn't figure into the calculations of the Bush White House,
where the president himself, Vice President Dick Cheney and political
commissar Karl Rove practice the politics of vengeance.

The Bushies despise Wellstone, who unlike most Senate Democrats has been
fighting spirited battles against the new administration's policies on
everything from the environment to the tax cuts for the rich to military aid
for the "Plan Colombia" drug war boondoggle. Other Democratic senators who
face re-election contests in 2002 are, according to polls, more vulnerable
than Wellstone. But the Bush camp has been focusing highest-level attention
on "Plan Wellstone" - its project to silence progressive opposition.

What does Wellstone say? "I think the way to oppose George W. Bush is to
stand up to him, to speak out when his policies are wrong, to put holds on
bad legislation he's promoting. Obviously, that's not the sort of opposition
Bush and Cheney approve of. The nice thing is that, even if they can dictate
the Republican nominee, the people of Minnesota still get to choose their
senator."

From the New York Times :
Senator Paul Wellstone Campaigns in Race He Pledged Not to Run
September 3, 2001

Republican strategists say other Senate Democrats are at risk, notably Tim
Johnson in South Dakota and Mary L. Landrieu in Louisiana. But no incumbent,
they say, is more vulnerable than Mr. Wellstone, whose defeat would be
especially satisfying to the White House, given his opposition to almost
every bit of the Bush agenda on Capitol Hill.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have taken a hand in selecting
a candidate they believe can defeat Mr. Wellstone, and they appear to have
found a strong candidate in the popular Republican mayor of St. Paul, Norm
Coleman. Mr. Cheney persuaded another Republican candidate to pull out of
the race.

Statement on Paul Wellstone's Homepage :
Statement about Paul Wellstone
Paul Wellstone was one of a kind. He was a man of principle and conviction,
in a world that has too little of either. He was dedicated to helping the
little guy, in a business dominated by the big guys. We who had the
privilege of working with him hope that he will be remembered as he lived
every day: as a champion for people.
His family was the center of his life and it breaks our hearts that his wife
of 39 years and his daughter Marcia were with him. Our prayers are with Mark
and David and the grandchildren he and Sheila cherished so much.

US Senator Paul Wellstone - A Biography (US Senate)




----- Original Message -----
From: "Dick Eastman" <eastman@bentonrea.com>
To: <frameup@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 10:44 PM
Subject: [SeptemberDisaster] Wellstone plane crash -- Fw: Recent Mysterious
(political) Plane Crashes


> And don't forget House Majority Whip Hale Boggs -- who seerved on the
Warren
> COmmission,
> and announced on the House floor that there was a conspiracy in the
nation.
> Clinton was driving
> him around Texas as a "volunteer" less than a week before his death in a
> flight over Alaska.
> Never found, btw.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "The Palmers"
>
> > Subject: Re: [FOB1] Recent Mysterious Plane Crashes
> >
> >
> > In a message dated 10/25/2002 2:13:43 PM Central Standard Time,
> > LAattorney@aol.com writes:
> >
> >
> > > Here are some key plane crashes that, accidents or not, were a boon
> > > to Republicans:
> > >
> > > Senator Wellstone: We all understand the implications of this.
> > >
> > > Senator Carnahan: Ashcroft was his opponent, the crash ostensibly was
> > > going to ensure Ashcroft the race, but the voters had other ideas.
> > >
> > > John F. Kennedy, Jr.: Without question, a future US President.
> > >
> > > Sen. John Tower: The first of the bunch. A moderate Republican who
> > > was not a fan of the far right. He knew where the Iran-Contra bodies
> > > were buried and reportedly was going to spill the beans on his fellow
> > > Republicans.
> > >
> > > Why is it that there haven't been any crashes that have favored
> > > Democrats? What are the odds?
> > >
> >
> > I actually see a couple of things going on here.  Not only does this
> action
> > knock off a very good Democratic Senator: it also again fills the media
> air
> > waves with something other than the Bush administration's abysmal record
> and
> > the US deteriorating economy.  And, this (accident)? could very easily
> have
> > taken out Ted Kennedy too, who is in MN right now since he was
campaigning
> > for Paul Wellstone.  As you can surmise I do not believe in coincidences
> or
> > accidents this close to a crucial election.
> >
> > ILCrystal
> >
> >  Government at it's worst: by the worst
> ============
> From: "meg"
>
> Subject: Senator Wellstone, wife and daughter killed
>
>
> > another plane crash accident; how very sad.
> >
> >
> > Here's an interesting quote Wellstone made while debating the new
> > bankrupcy legislation back in 2000....
> >
> > >>"This legislation is terrible for working families and it rewards
> > the predatory and irresponsible lending by banks and credit card
> > companies which fed the crisis in the first place. For that reason,
> > a broad coalition of consumer groups, unions, women's and children's
> > groups, civil rights organizations, and religious groups have united
> > in opposition to this bill.
> >
> > http://www.commondreams.org/news2000/1012-04.htm<<
> >
> > It's difficult not to be suspicious these days.