Bush administration: putting a hit on a key witness?

I'm not sure what it's like in other countries, but here in the United States we love a good organized crime story. The Sicilian/Italian Mafia is endlessly glorified in American popular culture. And who could blame Hollywood for doing so? Let's face it, fictionalized criminal conspiracies make for good entertainment. Two of the best television programs to come out in recent years, The Sopranos and The Wire, deal explicitly with organized crime, the former with the Mafia in Northern New Jersey and the latter with African American drug organizations in Baltimore.

In The Wire, The Sopranos, and other fictionalized representations of organized crime, members of criminal syndicates constantly fear that one of their own might "flip" and divulge details of their criminal behavior to the authorities. Faced with such a threat, the syndicate is forced to kill the perceived informant or risk the demise of the entire organization. Examples from the terrific tv series mentioned above abound. Who could forget the tragic, dramatic turn of events from Season 2 of The Sopranos when Paulie, Silvio, and Tony had to kill their lifelong friend and associate, Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero, upon learning he was an FBI informant? Similarly, fans of The Wire no doubt recall when Stringer Bell, interim head of the Barksdale drug organization, had D'Angelo killed in season 2 for fear that he might flip in the future. Such scenes are heartbreaking, but logical, reflecting the harsh realities of organized crime.

All kidding and entertainment aside, it appears possible that the Bush administration has borrowed a play from the Soprano and Barksdale playbook and had a potential informant eliminated to protect its criminal enterprise. Though the analogy with the Stringer's hit on D'Angelo in The Wire is likely more apt than the Sopranos case: there's little chance the leadership of the Bush crime family had the kind of direct involvement in their hit that Tony, Paulie, and Silvio had. Now what, you might be asking, am I babbling about? I'm talking about the case of Michael Connell, a Republican operative and Karl Rove's former IT guru who mysteriously died last week in a plane crash.

For those who don't know, Connell was a computer expert who designed software for a variety of elections, including the official Ohio vote tabulation software for the presidential election in 2004. According to Mark Crispin Miller, the software designed by Connell was instrumental in allowing George W. Bush to steal the election in Ohio and thus win reelection to the Presidency. He was also apparently involved in the 2002 Alabama gubernatorial race, in which the Republicans may have stolen the election from Governor Mike Siegelman. If you haven't heard of Connell, don't feel bad, he and the allegations against him have received basically no coverage in the mainstream press. As for the mechanics of the program he designed to commit election fraud, I'm a little hazy on the specifics, but the method is called "Man in the Middle". Essentially, he designed a program whereby the election results were "shunted" to another computer and then back to the secretary of State. Many believe the only purpose of such an arrangement is to commit fraud. After the election, Connell's "Man in the Middle" scheme caught the ire of Stephen Spoonamore, an expert on computer fraud and a lifelong Republican. Spoonamore successfully got the state of Ohio to hear a RICO, or racketeering, case against Connell and his company, GovTech Solutions, for allegedly fixing the Ohio presidential election. After much delay, Connell agreed testify as part of the RICO case. However, according to his lawyer, he and his wife repeatedly received threats from Karl Rove, who warned that they could suffer if they didn't "take the fall" in the RICO case.

Fast forward to last Friday, when Connell died in a plane crash in Akron, Ohio. Immediately after the crash, several stories were circulated which advanced possible explanations. However, Mark Crispin Miller, who was interviewed by Amy Goodman on yesterday's Democracy Now, claims that many of these claims were dubious:

I think we’re obliged to investigate this thing very, very thoroughly. And that means, first of all, taking a close look at some of the stories that were immediately circulated to account for what happened, that it was bad weather. That was the line they used when Wellstone’s plane went down. There had been bad weather, but it had passed two hours before. And this comes from a woman at the airport information desk in Akron. We’re told that his plane was running out of gas, which is a little bit odd for a highly experienced pilot like Connell, but apparently, when the plane went down, there was an explosion, a fireball that actually charred and pocked some of the house fronts in the neighborhood.

So basically, we have a situation in which a key witness in a case that could reveal that the Bush administration stole the 2004 election dies in a plane crash, despite the fact that he's an expert pilot. Further, his death occurred in the context of repeated threats by Karl Rove against him and his family, at least according to his lawyer. Now maybe I'm crazy and I watch too much tv. Maybe it's just a big coincidence that Connell, a key witness who was set to testify, ended up dead before the trial. But after eight years of Bush, I have grown suspicious of anything and everything these guys do. There's pretty much nothing I wouldn't put past them. Thus, I have a feeling they may have had their hand in this death. If not, maybe the stress of the case and the threats against him by Rove led him to suicide. Now, I know these are explosive accusations but if I've drawn false conclusions in this case, the Bush administration has only themselves to blame. Let's face it, this situation reeks of a Soprano/Barksdale style hit against a potential informant. I won't change my beliefs until I've seen unimpeachable evidence which proves otherwise.