Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

News & Supplemental  

Former Reagan, Bush I, Bush II Staffer Found Murdered

COMMENT: John Wheel­er III, an expert on the U.S. mil­i­tary who served in the admin­is­tra­tions of Rea­gan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush was found mur­dered in a Delaware land­fill.

Who killed him and why remains to be seen.

In this con­text, it is worth not­ing that Wheel­er was very afraid of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cyber war­fare. Is his death in any way relat­ed to the Wik­iLeaks imbroglio? Might the U.S. be in for an act of cyber-ter­ror­ism? Richard Clarke, among oth­ers, has warned about this.

Might Wheel­er have been mur­dered by a Fifth Col­umn ele­ment in this coun­try, not unlike the theft of sen­si­tive data which got John O’Neill dis­missed as the head of the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Bin Laden?

“Body of U.S. Mil­i­tary Expert Found in Del. Land­fill” by Ran­dall Chase [AP]; comcast.net News; 1/3/2011.

EXCERPT: The body of a mil­i­tary expert who served in three Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tions was found dumped in a land­fill and inves­ti­ga­tors said Mon­day they were try­ing to retrace his steps in the days lead­ing up to his death.

John Wheel­er III, 66, who had not been report­ed miss­ing, was sched­uled to be on an Amtrak train from Wash­ing­ton to Wilm­ing­ton on Dec. 28, but author­i­ties say it’s not clear if he ever made that trip. His body was found three days lat­er, on New Year’s Eve, as a garbage truck emp­tied its con­tents at the Cher­ry Island land­fill. His death has been ruled a homi­cide.

Wheel­er served as an Army staff offi­cer in Viet­nam and lat­er worked in the Rea­gan and both Bush admin­is­tra­tions. . . .

Discussion

6 comments for “Former Reagan, Bush I, Bush II Staffer Found Murdered”

  1. Sheesh! “He rec­om­mend­ed that the U.S. not use bio­log­i­cal weapons.” And then there’s this astute obser­va­tion by an offi­cer of the Court: ” ‘He was just not the sort of per­son who would wind up in a land­fill.’ ”

    Posted by Rob Coogan | January 4, 2011, 6:11 am
  2. If true, this is inter­est­ing — I don’t have any idea whether it is cred­i­ble.

    “Top U.S. Offi­cial Mur­dered After Arkansas Weapons Test Caus­es Mass Death”

    http://inteltrends.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/top-u-s-official-murdered-after-arkansas-weapons-test-causes-mass-death/

    Posted by ivan | January 5, 2011, 3:29 am
  3. Now these two inter­est­ing spec­u­la­tive items — again I have no idea whether they are cred­i­ble.

    The Boe­ing KC-767 tanker alleged in the Russ­ian report to have sprayed the Phos­gene which alleged­ly killed the birds and fish in Arkansas seems itself to be a fac­tor in an intense and pricey ($35bn+) inter­na­tion­al aero­space con­tract fight between Boe­ing and the Euro­pean Aero­nau­tic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) to build new US tanker planes. These sto­ries sug­gest that some pow­er­ful Repub­li­cans favor EADS over Boe­ing. Might this have been an attempt by some con­stituen­cy to make the Boe­ing KC-767 seem dan­ger­ous and unre­li­able? The first arti­cle on the Russ­ian assess­ment of the Phos­gene sit­u­a­tion twice men­tions “crit­i­cal mal­func­tions” in the Boe­ing KC-767. Rus­sia is appar­ent­ly a part­ner of some sort in EADS.

    Karl Rove is men­tioned periph­er­al­ly though not impli­cat­ed.
    Now there is also a report­ed bird kill in Swe­den where Rove is an advis­er to the gov­ern­ment — could this be a decoy event to make the US kills seem unre­lat­ed to Phos­gene? Far-fetched but who knows?

    First some pos­si­ble back­ground — April 7, 2010:
    “Was [Alaba­ma gov­er­nor] Siegel­man Pros­e­cu­tion Con­nect­ed to Air Force Tanker Deal?”
    http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2010/04/was-siegelman-prosecution-connected-to.html

    Then this yes­ter­day:
    “Why Did For­mer Bush-Admin­is­tra­tion Offi­cial Wind Up Dead In A Delaware Land­fill?” http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-did-former-bush-administration.html

    Posted by ivan | January 5, 2011, 4:07 pm
  4. Update:

    Pen­ta­gon aide ‘was killed by hit­man’ claims dis­traught wid­ow

    cf. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358447/

    Posted by Curt | February 20, 2011, 12:12 am
  5. Sex and Death the pass time of Empires. Thank you every­one.

    Posted by lazy freedom | December 4, 2012, 12:29 am
  6. With a wave of mys­tery­ous banker deaths still under­way, it’s worth recall­ing that the mur­der of cyber­war­fare expert, John Wheel­er III, in late 2010 is still com­plete­ly unsolved:

    Delaware Online
    Delaware crime: The death of John P. Wheel­er: Ran­dom killing or assas­si­na­tion?
    In first extend­ed inter­view, wid­ow of for­mer fed­er­al offi­cial says he looked scared in his final days
    May 11, 2011

    Writ­ten by
    CRIS BARRISH
    The News Jour­nal

    When Kather­ine Klyce views the wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed video of her late hus­band, John P. Wheel­er III, wan­der­ing around a Wilm­ing­ton park­ing garage less than two days before he was beat­en to death, she sees fear in the face of the man she loved.

    “I think he was afraid,” Klyce told The News Jour­nal about the video in which the for­mer Pen­ta­gon offi­cial is seen look­ing in vain for his car.

    In her first extend­ed inter­view since his body tum­bled from a garbage truck into the Cher­ry Island Land­fill on Dec. 31, Klyce dif­fered with those who believe Wheel­er appeared dis­ori­ent­ed in his final days.

    Many observers of the high-pro­file mur­der mys­tery have not­ed that Wheel­er looked disheveled while car­ry­ing his shoe and search­ing for his car, which had been in a garage sev­er­al blocks away for weeks.

    Klyce said she does­n’t know what might have fright­ened her hus­band of 13 years dur­ing his last days, a peri­od in which he also beseeched his phar­ma­cist for a ride from New Cas­tle to Wilm­ing­ton and asked strangers to dri­ve him to Philadel­phia.

    “I don’t think he was act­ing abnor­mal,” Klyce said of a man known for quirky habits and for­get­ful­ness.

    Klyce acknowl­edged that the blunt-spo­ken, 66-year-old Wheel­er, who suf­fered from bipo­lar dis­or­der, had made “lots of ene­mies” dur­ing his years in the nation­al defense com­mu­ni­ty and as one of the key founders of the Viet­nam Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al in Wash­ing­ton, but “nobody that would kill him.”

    Since Wheel­er was killed by lethal blows more than four months ago, Klyce has pon­dered whether he was killed by some­one he acci­den­tal­ly encoun­tered in Wilm­ing­ton, where he was last seen short­ly before 9 p.m. on Dec. 30, or whether he was the vic­tim of assas­si­na­tion.

    Asked if she was lean­ing toward one sce­nario, she said, “Yeah, but I’m not going to tell you which one. I’m open to being wrong.”

    Klyce ear­li­er told online mag­a­zine Slate.com she thought some­one was “paid” to kill Wheel­er, but her lawyer said she was only con­sid­er­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties.

    In a mys­tery that has drawn world­wide media scruti­ny and a $25,000 reward offer from Klyce, police say they have no sus­pects and don’t know whether he was killed in a tar­get­ed or ran­dom attack.

    Though police have been tight-lipped about what they have uncov­ered, Klyce’s account helped fill sev­er­al gaps in a time­line that began when Wheel­er left their New York City con­do­mini­um the morn­ing of Dec. 28 and end­ed with the dis­cov­ery of his corpse three days lat­er.

    For exam­ple, she said Wheel­er was found wear­ing his Rolex watch, bought in Viet­nam dur­ing his tour in the late 1960s, and trea­sured West Point class ring. Though the neck wal­let Wheel­er usu­al­ly wore to car­ry a cred­it card, keys and an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card were not returned, Klyce said the dis­cov­ery of the expen­sive jew­el­ry on his body “casts doubt on the rob­bery the­o­ry.”

    Though author­i­ties won’t say where on Wheel­er’s body the fatal blows were inflict­ed, Klyce said that when she viewed his corpse a few days lat­er, she saw bruis­ing on his face under the mor­ti­cian’s make­up, and his head was swollen. She saw his body only from the neck up and spec­u­lat­ed the fatal blows were to “his tor­so.”

    Klyce said police have giv­en her con­flict­ing accounts about whether Wheel­er also had a heart attack after being beat­en.

    “First they said he did, then they said he did­n’t, then they said he did,” she said.

    ...

    All seemed fine over the Christ­mas week­end, she said. Wheel­er arrived in New York late on Dec. 24, and they spent a few days in their Harlem con­do­mini­um with fam­i­ly. On Mon­day, Dec. 27, Klyce said the cou­ple planned to dine out with anoth­er cou­ple, but Klyce said she felt sick, so Wheel­er went alone.

    When she woke the next day, Dec. 28, he was gone. She expect­ed him back in a few days for the wed­ding. They nev­er spoke again.

    Wheel­er did­n’t dis­cuss his plans for Wash­ing­ton, except that he want­ed to drop off Christ­mas gifts to a few friends. She did­n’t expect him to go to Mitre Corp., the McLean, Va., defense con­trac­tor for which he con­sult­ed on cyberde­fense and oth­er issues, because he rarely vis­it­ed the com­plex.

    She does­n’t know what Wheel­er did or whom he saw in Wash­ing­ton, except that he ate at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Club about mid­day on Tues­day, Dec. 28.

    Wheel­er, who worked for the Pen­ta­gon in the last three Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tions, belonged to the club fre­quent­ed by mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal elite, such as for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld. Wheel­er some­times spent the night in one of their fan­cy suites.

    Wheel­er was­n’t “suit­ed for domes­tic life,” and the cou­ple — with homes in Delaware and New York — were apart more than they were togeth­er, Klyce said.

    “The best of all pos­si­ble worlds for Jack would be to live at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Club. It’s a pow­er place.”

    ...

    As the days and weeks with no answers turn into months, the frus­tra­tion has only increased for Wheel­er’s fam­i­ly.

    The younger Wheel­er, a 34-year-old Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia grad­u­ate stu­dent, said he can only hope inves­ti­ga­tors unrav­el all the strange ele­ments and “get to the bot­tom of it.”

    Klyce said the truth must emerge.

    “They have to solve it,” she said. “There’s no way they can’t.”

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 13, 2014, 9:27 pm

Post a comment