Kennedy was what aviators call a "low-time" pilot; he had his license, but he had only logged about 100 to 200 hours in the air. He had broken his ankle last month playing sports. And he was at the controls of a high-performance Piper Saratoga PA32 II HP after spending most of his two years of flying in a smaller

Cessna 182.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/jfkjr/stories/kennedy071899.htm

COMPLETE STORY FROM: “WAYNE MADSEN REPORT”

August 12, 2009 — JFK Jr.’s plane crash was originally treated as murder investigation
WMR has learned from a source who was a close friend of the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. that the FBI originally treated the July 16, 1999, crash of his Piper Saratoga in the waters off Martha’ Vineyard as a murder investigation. Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette were killed when their plane plummeted into the Atlantic en route from Caldwell Airport in Essex County, New Jersey to Martha’s Vineyard.

Kennedy’s wife was also three month’s pregnant with a boy.

When the plane was overdue the friend notified Woods Hole Coast Guard Station which, in turn, notified the FAA and other agencies.

According to the source, Kennedy, contrary to press reports, decided not to fly over open ocean from Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island to the Vineyard but instead hugged the Connecticut and Rhode Island coast lines until flying direct to the island. Kennedy did not identify his ultimate destination on the radio – he said that6 he was flying “east of Teterboro.”

The weather report around the time of the crash also indicated clear weather in the area:
“2053…Clear at or below 12,000 feet; visibility 8 miles; winds 250 degrees at 7 knots; temperature 23 degrees C; dewpoint 19 degrees C; altimeter 30.09 inches of Hg.
2153…Clear at or below 12,000 feet; visibility 10 miles; winds 240 degrees at 10 knots, gusts to 15 knots; temperature 24 degrees C; dewpoint 18 degrees C; altimeter 30.10 inches of Hg”
Some twelve minutes after Kennedy’s plane crashing, visibility around Martha’s Vineyard was reported at 10 miles, described as near perfect conditions by professional pilots.

There were also questions raised about Kennedy’s piloting skills. However, he had logged in 310 hours. The NTSB report also reported Kennedy’s most recent flight record:

The pilot flew over 17 of these legs without a CFI [Certified Flight Instructor] on board, including at least 5 at night. The pilot’s last known flight in the accident airplane without a CFI on board was on May 28, 1999.”

The Kennedy friend also stated that he learned from an FBI agent, as well as a Secret Service agent, who were friends of the Kennedy family that the FBI originally treated their investigation of the plane crash as a possible murder. Kennedy no longer enjoyed Secret Service protection as a protected person, according to the friend.

FBI agents, after the crash, fanned out across convenience and other stores in the Caldwell, New Jersey area and asked if anyone had recently purchased epoxy. According to the French magazine, France Dimanche, a pilot at the Caldwell airport had reported he heard a “weird noise” coming from Kennedy’s plane on takeoff. The FBI theorized that a whistle had been glued on the aft section of the plane in order to emit a distinct, unique, and high-pitched noise for the benefit of someone on the ground who wanted to correctly identify the plane when it descended for landing at Martha’s Vineyard.

The FBI discovered that there was “suspicious boating activity” in an area of Martha’s Vineyard where Kennedy’s plane was descending to 2000 feet for its final approach to the airport. The “suspicious” boaters claimed to be fishing for striped bass. However, when the FBI asked local fishermen to corroborate the suspicious boaters’ story, they stated that the particular area where they were discovered was not an area where Atlantic striped bass would be found. In fact, salt water striped bass do not start to run in Massachusetts coastal waters in great numbers until the autumn.

The FBI also found an unusual number of extra batteries in the fishermens’ boat.

The FBI was suspicious of the boat’s contents because after the plane’s wreckage was discovered, investigators found, according to Kennedy’s friend, that every light bulb, including that in the emergency flashlight, had been blown out on the plane and every circuit board, including those in the engine sensors and other electronic equipment, had been literally “melted.”

FBI agents on the scene preliminarily concluded that a “massive electromagnetic event” caused Kennedy’s plane to crash. FBI agents also found that the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) had its battery removed, possibly before the flight.

Every simulation the FBI conducted of a plane in Kennedy’s situation, with all lights off at night and with only the engine and the vacuum pump-operated attitude indicator functioning, resulted in the same result: the plane crashing into the water.

Before the FBI could begin examining the ocean floor for any “special equipment” that may have been thrown overboard from the fishing boat, their “murder” investigation was abruptly called off by FBI headquarters in Washington.

Kennedy was preparing to re-tool “George” magazine to take on investigations of a number of major stories, not least of which was the actual story behind the assassination of his father in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

According to an article in Germany’s Bild am Sonntag on August 1, 1999, Kennedy was also preparing to meet with the deputy chief of Mossad, Amiran Levine, at the Oak Room in Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel the Wednesday after Kennedy was killed. The subject was the assassination of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and that Rabin was assassinated by one of his body guards and not the convicted murderer Yigal Amir.

Kennedy’s friend said the real priority of the “George” publisher was to re-open the case of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the role that the father of the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate for the upcoming 2000 election — George W. Bush — played in the assassination. Apparently, some documents had come into Kennedy’s possession that pointed to George H. W. Bush as a prime participant, on behalf of the CIA, in President Kennedy’s murder.

On a 1997 visit to see Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana for an interview for “George,” the Cuban President reportedly told Kennedy a number of details about those behind his father’s assassination.

The occasion of Kennedy Jr.’s visit was the 35th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis between his father and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. According to Kennedy’s friend, Castro confided to Kennedy that a mafia ring headed up by Meyer Lansky, who lost his Cuban gambling holdings to Castro’s revolution, and a Canadian Zionist veteran of Israel’s Haganah army, Louis Bloomfield, were the primary planners of the Dallas “hit” on his father.

Jack Ruby, who killed the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, worked directly for Lansky’s organization, Kennedy was told.

The news came as a body blow. In a few weeks, I was scheduled to meet with Kennedy at his magazine’s offices in Washington, DC to discuss hiring on as one of a few investigative journalists Kennedy wanted to dig deep into a number of cases, but most importantly that of his father’s assassination. Kennedy had made initial contact with me via a colleague with The Village Voice. I signaled my readiness to do whatever Kennedy wanted because, first of all, I have always been an admirer of the Kennedy family, and after twelve years under Bush presidencies, that admiration has developed into a loyalty for which I make no apologies.

My past discussions with President Kennedy’s press secretary Pierre Salinger and Texas Governor John Connally led me to believe that the young Kennedy was on to the story of a lifetime — a lifetime that for Kennedy Jr. would be tragically snuffed out early.

In the end, Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate seat that Kennedy was to run for. Kennedy’s sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, would see her own hopes to be appointed to the Senate seat dashed when, according to John H. Kennedy Jr.s’ friend, Senator Charles Schumer and Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel conspired to have New York Governor David Paterson appoint a virtual unknown, Kirsten Gillibrand, to the seat. Caroline Kennedy was instead offered a consolation prize of the post of U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, a position that Schumer and Emanuel knew in advance she would never accept.

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