Karl Rove's tech guy, Michael Connell, killed by absurdly shady airplane crash as Ohio 2004 vote fraud case wiggles out

According to popular saying.... [i.e. not verified]

"If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota."

-- Dick Cheney to Paul Wellstone, related by Wellstone to veterans in Willmar, MN.

*****

Ahh, electoralism - the belief that bits of paper will add up to some kind of true plurality judgment about which people should control government offices.

As we have re-discovered here in Minnesota, sometimes things are so close to even that no clear winner emerges; the clever games of attorneys combine with dumb luck to produce a winner for Paul Wellstone's seat. (Fortunately, in this state there's a strong degree of integrity among the relevant officials - likely producing an essentially honest Al Franken victory. Paper ballots are Good!)

In places like Ohio and Florida, the citizens are not so lucky. In particular, devious political parties conspire to lock out the possibility of minor parties gaining power, while also installing generally the shittiest voting machines that flaky and quite often insanely evil corporations can ooze into existence.

Who even knows how many votes there are? Who cares??

Blah... it's getting late and my sentence structures are unwieldy...

Anyway here is the story so far... This guy Michael Connell was essentially Karl Rove's top computer nerd -- he just finished leading John McCain's tech efforts, too. He helped design the so-called 'alternative White House email system', the one they were using to send around all the fun stuff like the corrupt orders to US Attorneys. Connell designed the web systems for Congressional committees, as well.

So it seemed as if Connell was getting dragged into the extended legal fight over the insanely dodgy 2004 presidential election in Ohio. (I got pretty pissed off about that, and made a fairly game effort to follow things on this website.)

I didn't realize until this evening that the Ohio 2004 Secretary of State website and the secret White House parallel email servers were actually run from the same set of servers - Connell's babies. Now this is starting to make sense...

Perhaps Connell was going to spill the beans about his secret backdoors in the voting machines, or whatever let them flip the nasty bits around for so-called 'electronic voting machines.' (in reality they are of course Black Boxes without fundamental safeguards.)

As it turns out, Connell was on his way back to Ohio and likely to spill the whole damn thing, and wouldn't ya know it, his plane went down!

The circumstances are unclear, but it seems not to be your usual crash or esoteric phenomena (such as the well known Paul Wellstone electromagnetic pulse weapon conspiracy theory [a.k.a "why not? They've murdered for less..."])...

Politicians of rebellious stripes have such bad times with aircraft... Sen. Paul Wellstone, Sen. John Heinz, General Alexander Lebed, Congressman Hale Boggs, Congressman Nick Begich, Governor Mel Carnahan, Congressman Lawrence McDonald.. to cite a few crashes noted on one thread.

It hasn't gotten the notice it deserves, but Dick Cheney suddenly does seem extra demented and threatening right now, openly taunting anyone with scruples. He might just be blowing up more planes for fun, at this point.

Sidebar for conspiracy journalism: The outcome of this mess has some extra meaning for Wayne Madsen, the outside-the-box hound of all things implausible, nasty and weird within the Bush Administration. Madsen got ripped by Keith Olbermann, yet denied a chance to speak on his own behalf, as Olbermann carefully made a big deal about the mess in Ohio. It was like Olbermann needed to have someone more conspiratorial to mark against, or rather, to act as 'left gatekeeper' against. (others also shouted down the story)

Madsen claimed there were a series of crazy offshore front companies paying for all of the programmers needed to develop the voting machine hacks (I posted about it at the time - good to look @ now); in turn, these people got stiffed by the System anyway. I gather the idea is that Connell was a central cog in this classic-style arrangement.

Thus, if Madsen's angle turns out to be roughly true - and as he reported it years ago - then, at least, Olbermann owes him an apology. And of course, we'd learn yet again that the most bizarre criminal conspiracy type behavior was what they were up to, surprise surprise...

Anyway...

Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation

Last update: 11:24 a.m. EST Dec. 20, 2008

WASHINGTON, Dec 20, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution ("VR"), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell's activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how he can tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus."

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell's life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR's attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell's not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

On October 31, Mr. Connell appeared before a federal judge in Ohio after being subpoenaed in a federal lawsuit investigating the rigging of the 2004 election under the direction of Karl Rove. The judge ordered Mr. Connell to testify under oath at a deposition on November 3rd, the day before the presidential election. Velvet Revolution received confidential information that the White House was extremely concerned about Mr. Connell talking about his illegal work for the White House and two Bush/Cheney 04 attorneys were dispatched to represent him.

An associate of Mr. Connell's told VR that Mr. Connell was involved with the destruction of the White House emails and the setting up of the off-grid White House email system.

Mr. Connell handled all of John McCain's computer work in the recent presidential campaign. VR has received direct evidence that the McCain campaign kept abreast of the legal developments against Mr. Connell by reading the VR dedicated website, www.rovecybergate.com.

VR demands that the Ohio Attorney General and the United States Justice Department conduct a complete investigation into the activities of Mr. Connell and determine whether there was any foul play in his death. VR demands that federal law enforcement officials place the following people under protective custody pending this investigation. Heather Connell who

is the owner of GovTech Solutions, Randy Cole, the former President of GovTech Solutions, and Jeff Averbeck, the CEO of SmartTech in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Both GovTech and SmartTech have been implicated in the rigging of the 2000 and 2004 elections and the White House email scandal. Our prior request to have Mr. Connell protected went unheeded and now he is dead.

SOURCE Velvet Revolution

http://www.rovecybergate.com

BradBlog is of course all over it - they're part of the Velvet Revolution gig.

Duly noted on BoingBoing: Man who set up alternate email for White House dies in plane crash and Larisa Alexandrovna considers that, in fact, she knew this guy real well, he was scared, and ready to talk about the White House's silly illegal email system:

One of my sources died in a plane crash last night...

UPDATED BELOW (1, 2, and 3)

I don't usually reveal sources, but I think this is incredibly important. Michael Connell died in a plane crash last night. He was a key witness in the Ohio election fraud case that I have been reporting on. More importantly, however, he had information that he was ready to share.

You see, Mike Connell set-up the alternate email and communications system for the White House. He was responsible for creating the system that hosted the infamous GWB43.com accounts that Karl Rove and others used. When asked by Congress to provide these emails, the White House said that they were destroyed. But in reality, what Connell is alleged to have done is move these files to other servers after having allegedly scrubbed the files from all "known" Karl Rove accounts.

In addition, I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman. This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.

Uhm, so there is that... What is the nut of this Ohio thing? Alexandrovna & co reported earlier:

King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell

The case, known as King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, was filed against Kenneth J. Blackwell on Aug. 31, 2006 by Columbus attorneys Clifford Arnebeck, Robert Fitrakis and others. It initially charged Blackwell with racially discriminatory practices -- including the selective purging of voters from the election rolls and the unequal allocation of voting machines to various districts -- and asked for measures to be taken to prevent similar problems during the November 2006 election.

On Oct. 9, 2006, an amended complaint added charges of various forms of ballot-rigging as also having the effect of "depriving the Plaintiffs of their voting rights, including the right to have their votes successfully cast without intimidation, dilution, cancellation or reversal by voting machine or ballot tampering." A motion to dismiss the case as moot was filed following the November 2006 election, but it was instead stayed to allow for settlement discussions.

The case took on fresh momentum earlier this year when Arnebeck announced in July that he was filing to "lift the stay in the case [and] proceed with targeted discovery in order to help protect the integrity of the 2008 election." The new filing was inspired in part by the coming forward as a whistleblower of GOP IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore, who said he was prepared to testify to the plausibility of electronic vote-rigging having been carried out in 2004.

Arnebeck’s hope was that in the course of the discovery procedure it would be possible to subpoena Michael Connell, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and others to obtain additional information and improve the focus of the case. The stay was lifted Sept. 19, 2008 by an order from Magistrate Judge Terrence P. Kemp of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and a subpoena was served to Connell on the following Monday, Sept. 22.

Allegations against Connell

The interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell’s name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to presented the 2004 presidential returns as they came in.

Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates. This in itself might have raised questions about his involvement in creating Ohio’s official state election website.

However, the alternative media group ePluribus Media further discovered in November 2006 that election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted on the servers of a company in Chattanooga, TN called SmarTech, which also provided hosting for a long list of Republican Internet domains.

“Since early this decade, top Internet ‘gurus’ in Ohio have been coordinating web services with their GOP counterparts in Chattanooga, wiring up a major hub that in 2004, first served as a conduit for Ohio's live election night results,” researchers at ePluribus Media wrote.

A few months after this revelation, when a scandal erupted surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for reasons of White House policy, other researchers found that the gwb43 domain used by members of the White House staff to evade freedom of information laws by sending emails outside of official White House channels was hosted on those same SmarTech servers.

Given that the Bush White House used SmarTech servers to send and receive email, the use of one of those servers in tabulating Ohio’s election returns has raised eyebrows. Ohio gave Bush the decisive margin in the Electoral College to secure his reelection in 2004.

IT expert Stephen Spoonamore says the SmartTech server could have functioned as a routing point for malicious activity and remains a weakness in electronic voting tabulation.

Delicious! No wonder they had to get rid of this cat. Wow...

The BradBlog comment threads are abuzz with people snooping into aircraft registration records (which not coincidentally are among my favorite dodgy items in the security bureaucracy). But that's another twist entirely...