GOP IT Guru dies in suspicious plane crash - Karl Rove implicated in possible sabotage

Michael Connell,45, of Akron died Friday when his plane crashed near a vacant house in Uniontown while attempting to land at nearby Akron-Canton (Ohio) Airport. Beginning as a political campaign worker and Congressional staffer, Connell became a key Republican media consultant who developed Internet strategies for the 2000 and 2004 Bush-Cheney campaigns. Connell developed a host of federal government software and data management systems. He was founder and CEO of Cleveland-based New Media Communications, which built Web sites for a virtual who's-who list of republican political leaders including President Bush and former presidential nominee John McCain, and he was the chief IT consultant for former White House Chief of Staff and long-time GOP guru Karl Rove. Connell is survived by his wife and their four children. Connell's ties to the Bush family extend back to working on campaigns for George H.W. Bush and Jeb Bush, for whom he built the campaign site jeb.org. In 1999 he told the Cleveland magazine Inside Business, "I'm loyal to my network, I'm loyal to my friends, and I'm loyal to the Bush family." Connell's central role in building the IT infrastructure of the White House and his association with Karl Rove has brought him into the controversy surrounding missing White House e-mails relating to the firing of U.S. Attorneys and other topics, and the fate of e-mail communications sent by Rove and other administration staffers which were sent via a Republican Party Web site, gwb43.com, rather than through a whitehouse.gov address. Connell built the gwb43.com site, which shares mail servers with GovTech Solutions, an IT company owned on paper by Connell's wife, Heather. Connell's was subpoenaed earlier this year to testify in an Ohio federal court regarding alleged voter fraud in the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. Despite exit polls showing a lead by Democratic nominee John Kerry of more than 4 percent, Mr. Bush won the state's vote by 2.5 percent, along with its crucial electoral votes. It was later learned that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's office had sent Board of Elections workers home at 9 pm on election night and then had his own workers route Internet traffic from county election offices through out-of-state servers based at SMARTech in Chattanooga, Tenn. SMARTech hosts dozens of GOP Web domains. Just before the 2008 Presidential election, U.S. Judge Soloman Oliver refused Connell's request to quash the subpoena, and demanded his testimony relating to his IT work. In his deposition, Connell denied any knowledge of vote rigging. However informed sources such as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and Larisa Alexandrovna, managing editor of Raw Story, believe that Connell, under pressure from the US Attorney's office, had subsequently agreed to share vote-rigging information that would have implicated Rove. Following Last Friday's fatal accident, CBS Affiliate WOIO reported that Connell was warned at least twice about flying his plane because his plane might be sabotaged. Quoting an anonymous close friend of Connell's, WOIO correspondent Blake Chenault also reported that twice in the past two months Connell, who was an experienced pilot, canceled flights because of suspicious problems with his plane. In July, 2008 Connell's attorney, Cliff Arnbeck, sent a formal request for witness protection to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in an email with the subject line "Report of Rove threats against witness Michael Connell."