From The File Report: 2nd officer backs Brown coverup United Press International December 9, 1997 PITTSBURGH, Dec. 9 (UPI) _ A published report says a second Armed Forces medical examiner says the corpse of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown seemed to have a bullet hole in the top of the head. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports U.S. Army Lt. Col. David Hause ("hoss") says he saw an apparent bullet wound in the head, supporting the account of forensic pathologist examiner Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell. According to the report, Hause and Cogswell, both members of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, participated in the agency's investigation of the April 1996 military jet crash in which Brown and 34 others died. AFIP spokesman Chris Kelly tells United Press International the wound to Brown's head superficially looked like a bullet wound, but "scientific data including X-rays absolutely ruled it out." He says a close examination found the hole was "punched-out," entirely consistant with a blunt object injury that would be expected in a plane crash. However, he says Ron Brown was a civilian, and AFIP investigators did not have the authority to do a full autopsy. The body received only an external exam. The Tribune-Review quotes Hause saying he was working near the examination table where Brown's body was laid out when a commotion erputed and someone said, "Gee, this looks like a gunshot wound." Hause says he left his examination table to view the wound, and said at the time, "It looks like a gunshot wound to me, too." He described the wound as "a punched-out .45-caliber entrance hole." Cogswell, who never examined Brown's body but was AFIP's man at the crash scene, maintains that X-rays of Brown's head have dissappeared from the institute's file, including one that apparently shows bullet fragments. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has published some of photos of the X- rays. AFIP spokesman Kelly says "the alleged bullet fragments were caused by a defect in the reusable X-ray film cassette, and we took multiple X- rays using multiple cassettes to confirm this finding." Former NYPD investigator and forensics professor Tom Cubic tells UPI that if there is any doubt about the cause of death, such as an injury that looks like a bullet wound, an autopsy should always be done. Copyright 1997 by United Press International. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from UPI.     | List of Articles |