CRASH OF PLANE CARRYING 12 WATERGATE PEOPLE SUSPICIOUS
[From *The Spotlight*, Feb. 14, 1994]
What really happened during the infamous “Watergate plane crash”
at Chicago’s airport on December 8, 1972?
United Airlines flight 553 out of Washington, D.C. exploded while
landing in Chicago. Aboard were 12 people who were connected in
some way to the burgeoning Watergate scandal. Among the victims
was Dorothy Hunt, wife of former CIA man (and Watergate burglar)
E. Howard Hunt.
Evidence indicated the plane was sabotaged, but independent
investigator Sherman Skolnick made headlines when he charged
thatthe sabotage had been covered up by the government.
Skolnick discussed his findings when he was the guest on the
December 23 broadcast of *The Spotlight*’s nightly radio call-in
talk forum, Radio Free America, with host Tom Valentine.
At the time of the crash, Valentine was a journalist working in
Chicago and became acquainted with Skolnick during the furor over
the loss of flight 553.
According to Valentine, “It was the flight 553 affair that really
convinced me this government was corrupt. I was a meat head and
believed in our government. I knew the medical establishment
was corrupt, but this really convinced me the government was
corrupt.”
Skolnick, who has been a regular guest on Radio Free America, and
who is an adviser to Liberty Lobby’s Populist Action Committee,
has a recorded five-minute commentary (changed several times a
week) that people may call 24 hours a day at regular long-
distance rates. The number is (312) 731-1100. Skolnick’s recorded
message brings periodic updates on matters the investigator and
his research team are working on.
An edited transcript of Valentine’s interview with Skolnick
follows.
VALENTINE: The Watergate plane crash is the first investigation
you and I worked on together.
SKOLNICK: This subject is one of the great forbidden subjects of
this country. You are not supposed to talk publicly about
airplanes that have been sabotaged. If sabotage is ever brought
up, it’s always in some foreign country where a bomb blows up the
airplane.
VALENTINE: Then the loss of the United Airlines flight 553 was
not just fog or pilot error or something like that.
SKOLNICK: In the history of aviation there have been a number of
situations where there was actual sabotage — not necessarily a
bomb — and that sabotage put the plane down and killed people
for political reasons.
I started writing a book about airplane sabotage right after the
plane crash. I called it “The Watergate Plane Crash.” The reason
why was because on this one plane were 12 people connected with
the Watergate affair.
The disaster happened exactly one month after Richard Nixon had
been re-elected. The Watergate affair had started, but it was not
widely known at the time.
Former CIA man (and Watergate burglar) E. Howard Hunt, part of
the so-called White House Plumbers, was under arrest. It later
came out that Hunt was threatening to blow the lid off the White
House if Nixon didn’t take care of him. Hunt wanted $2 million.
What Hunt reportedly had was information tending to show that
Nixon, who was in Dallas at the time John F. Kennedy was
murdered, was complicit in the assassination. Hunt’s wife Dorothy
was carrying around “hush” money to various witnesses in an
effort to silence them about the Watergate affair.
She was on flight 553, and this time she was traveling under her
own name. She was so concerned about the baggage (which contained
$2 million worth of cashier’s checks and money orders, which some
astute people could have traced back to the Nixon White House)
that she bought an extra first class seat for her baggage (and
the valuables therein).
The press later said there was only $10,000 in her possession,
but that was false. We know about this because of records of the
National Transportation Safety Board which had the manifest of
the airplane.