With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
Wednesday December 29, 11:38 AM
Witness in Brown Case May Have Been Murdered
Oklahoma's chief medical examiner is exploring the possibility that a key government witness in the Independent Counsel's investigation of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown may have been murdered.
In 1997, Oklahoma businessman Ron Miller provided the government key evidence -- including audio tapes -- against Eugene and Nora Lum, two fund-raisers with close ties to Brown and the Clinton White House.
For more than two years Miller's death has been officially classified as "natural." But, last week, legal consultant Stephen Dresch persuaded the Oklahoma state medical examiner to reclassify Miller's cause of death as "unknown," saying that the available medical evidence was also "consistent with homicide."
Dresch is currently involved in a lawsuit stemming from the 1996 plane crash death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.
Evidence provided by Miller to the independent counsel then probing Secretary Brown's business dealings helped prosecutors build a case against fund-raisers Eugene and Nora Lum. The Lums had given Brown's son Michael gifts of stock in their company, Dynamic Energy Resources, made him a board member and lavished him with six-figure consulting fees.
The Lums' daughter Trisha won a slot in the Commerce Department and even accompanied Brown on his 1994 trade mission to China. Suspicions that the Lums used Michael Brown to funnel money to his father were never proven.
Nora Lum made at least thirteen visits to the Clinton White House between 1993 and 1995.
Miller had owned Gage Corp., a company that was sold in 1993 to Dynamic Energy. Miller also audiotaped his telephone conversations with the Lums and provided federal probers with 165 cassette recordings believed to be crucial to their prosecution.
Dresch told NewsMax.com on Tuesday that Miller had taken elaborate steps to document his dealing with the Lums, bugging his own office and even his briefcase. "He realized he was in the middle of something big," Dresch explained.
Anticipating the Lums' indictment in May of 1997, Miller was elated that his evidence gathering had resulted in the first real prosecution of the 1996 campaign finance scandal. "I'm really glad to see it," the Oklahoma businessman told American Lawyer News Service. "It needs to be exposed to the light of day. It could focus light on a portion of the Lums' activities, and that would expand to shed light on the rest."
However, the Clinton Justice Department, which had taken over Independent Counsel Daniel Pearson's probe of Commerce Secretary Brown's activities after Brown's April 1996 death, brought no action against the Lums related to their ties to Brown, his son or the Commerce Department. The Oklahoma couple were instead charged only with making illegal campaign contributions to Senator Edward Kennedy and an Oklahoma Democratic House candidate.
Less than four (cont)
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