ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604050116
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DUBROVNIK, CROATIA
SOURCE: Associated Press
FAULTY INSTRUMENTS could have played a part in the plane crash that killed Ron Brown and 34 others Wednesday.
Investigators turned Thursday to unraveling the final minutes of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's flight and the reason it crashed near this Dalmatian port, killing all 35 people aboard.
Defense Secretary William Perry said initial speculation focused on faulty instrumentation. But many questions remained a day after the jet clipped a barren hill in a raging rainstorm and crashed about two miles short of Dubrovnik's Cilipi Airport.
Why was the plane off course? Why did rescue efforts erroneously focus at first on the waters of the Adriatic Sea? Could Croatian, NATO and U.S. rescuers have reached the site any faster?
Even the number of victims was uncertain until more than 24 hours after the crash. Initial reports from Washington said 33 people were on board, but the State Department listed 35 victims Thursday - all Americans except for one Bosnian and a Croat.
President Clinton ordered flags lowered to half-staff Thursday and led a memorial service for Brown and the other crash victims.
The president began the day with a telephone call to Brown's wife, Alma, confirming that the secretary's body had been identified. The rest of the day was devoted to the task of calling families of other victims.
Clinton and his wife, Hillary, wiped away tears at a noontime prayer service with Cabinet members and officials of the Commerce Department and White House at St. John's Episcopal Church.
``It was 28 years ago that Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, working for what he believed in,'' Clinton said afterward. He added that the victims of the crash ``died doing what they believed in, so that's how we'll try to deal with this on this spring day in Easter week.''
Both of Virginia's senators praised Brown.
"You've got to give the man credit. He gathered up the best brains of America to go in there and help those people reconstruct their lives," Republican Sen. John Warner said during a campaign swing through Pulaski. Warner said he had flown into the same Croatian airfield during a fact-finding mission to the Balkans last year.
Democrat Charles Robb said he had "lost a good friend and political ally."
The State Department released the plane's manifest, which showed that 11 Commerce Department officials died with Brown, along with a CIA analyst, a Treasury Department executive, 12 corporate leaders, a newspaper reporter, six crew members, a foreign interpreter and a photographer.
The plane left Tuzla, Bosnia on Wednesday afternoon for what should have been a 130-mile flight south to the Croatian coast.The head of Croatia's air traffic control system said the plane had drifted left in its approach to the airport, about 12 miles southeast of the ancient city.
U.S. and local officials said the airport was missing a piece of computerized precision landing equipment, taken by the Yugoslav army in Croatia's 1991 war, that would allow planes to land in any weather.
Staff writer Paul Dellinger contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. The U.S. flag flies at half-staff Thursday atby CNBCommerce Secretary Ron Brown's former workplace. A last-minute
change of mind saved a Virginia executive's life. Story on B8. 2.
President Clinton hugs a mourner at a memorial service on Thursday.
color.