Commerce Secretary

On December 2, 1997, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review quoted Lt. Colonel Steve Cogswell, a doctor and deputy Armed Forces medical examiner with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and once member of the Brown plane crash investigation, as stating that Secretary Ron Brown was found with an "apparent gunshot wound" to his head.

 

Officials who examined Brown's body at Dover Air Force base shortly after the April 3, 1996 Croatia crash discovered that “Brown had a .45 inch inwardly beveling circular hole in the top of head”, a 45-caliber gunshot wound. The wound was documented, photographed, and X-rayed, in a medical examination at Dover Air Force base. Lt. Colonel Cogswell claims that one photo-X-ray even shows a possible "lead snowstorm" of metal fragments in Brown's head. Cogswell also states that incriminating X-rays were destroyed shortly after the examination of Brown, disappearing from the case file. "Even if you safely assumed accidental plane crash, when you got something that appears to be a homicide, that should bring everything to a screeching halt," Cogswell said, arguing that the finding of the apparent gunshot should have triggered the Presidential Assassination Statute - which covers Cabinet members like Brown - and immediately prompted an autopsy.

 

In a follow on report on December 8, 1997, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that US Army Lt. Colonel David Hause states he also personally examined a suspicious head wound on Brown's corpse while it was being examined at Dover Air Force Base. A commotion erupted on the examination table, Hause tells reporter Chris Ruddy, when the head wound was first discovered. He describes how the wound "looked like a punched-out .45-caliber entrance hole." The wound was documented, photographed, and X-rayed, in a medical examination at Dover Air Force base, according to both men. But Hause now says that all x-rays and photos of Brown's head are missing from the case file at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology facility in Rockville, Maryland.