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An ex-FBI agent claims Congressman Sonny Bono was clubbed to death by hit-men in 1998 and not killed in a skiing accident. Former FBI Agent Ted Gunderson says the politician was killed on the Nevada ski slopes by drug and weapons dealers who feared he was going to expose them.

He said the hit-men actually staged the tree collision.

According to Gunderson, “It’s nonsense for anyone to now try to suggest that Bono died after crashing into a tree. There’s zero evidence in this autopsy report to show such an accident happened. Instead, there’s powerful proof he was assassinated.”

The ex-agent has been researching the case for nearly a decade and says there was an “evil plot that was carried out to almost perfection by ruthless assassins .”

Gunderson says his findings are supported by top forensics experts who think Nevada authorities were too quick to label Bono’s death a skiing accident.

“There’ s no doubt in my mind Sonny was murdered by someone who needed him silenced,” Gunderson says.

He’s calling on authorities to open up an investigation into the Congressman’s death.

Charge of Quarters happened to exchange shifts every eight hours in the barracks. And at six Master Sergeant Goodwin handed Tommy the keys to the building, the logbook and went home. It was up to Tommy to make the rounds of the building. He leafed through the book to take note of how others had made their rounds.

The pattern was nearly always the same. Walk through the floor from which your bunk assignment was located then walk around the outside of the building. Of course, Tommy decided to be different.

His bunk was located right next to the outside door. If a person were coming in that door his room was on the right.

Tommy had one more stripe than everyone else. That made him the odd man out and he ended up with a room to himself. He stepped out into the hallway and face up the hall. “CQ, CQ, CQ, I have charge of quarters until 0200 hours.” That was the tradition for this barracks. With that Tommy turned and walked outside.

Texas evenings in the summer are hot, muggy affairs. This night was no different. It just seemed muggier. The skies were cloudy as well and there seemed to be a slight breeze blowing in from the south. “Thunderstorm,” Tommy said to himself.

After walking completely around the building and finding nothing out of the ordinary he headed up the outside stairs to the third floor. Men were not allowed on that floor, as it was a women’s dorm. He knocked on the door and asked one of the ladies if everything was okay. “Yes,” was her one word answer.

Then it was down the same set of stairs to the second floor. He entered the hallway and announced, “Charge of Quarters.” Several doors closed upon his announcement. “Whatever’s going on, I don’t care,” Tommy said to himself. Then he added as an after thought,” just as long as the building doesn’t burn down or blow up while on my watch.”

The same happened as he announced himself on the first floor. He walked through the length of the hallway and entered his room.

He sat down at his study area, opened the journal and wrote down, “1814 hours, nothing remarkable.” That was his entire log entry.

The next two hours were the same: nothing remarkable.

An hour later that would change. It was a couple minutes after nine when the base emergency siren sounded somewhere in the darkness. The wind had picked up and some rain fell. It evaporated as soon as it struck the hot pavement. The sky had a nasty dark pall to it.

The siren meant tornadoes.

The wind whipped Tommy’s hat away as he stepped outside. He started to chase after it but it disappeared into the shadows of the night. He continued on his fourth round.

The rain that fell, felt good. It cooled Tommy off in the heat of the evening. He could tell that a major storm was head their way. Then the lighting struck. It was a blinding flash of white light that left him temporarily without sight. The roaring boom of a thunderclap followed it closely.

He stood still waiting for his sight to adjust. Then he noticed that it was pitch dark. The lightning had struck a power pole on the other side of the mailroom and knocked out the electricity.

Still the siren wailed in the distance.

Tommy’s eyesight started to return, adjusting to the darkness of his surroundings. He headed up the outside steps towards the third floor.

Snap, buzz, pop!

Those were the three distinctive sounds he heard just south of where he stood. He looked in their general direction. What he saw caused a wave of alarm to rush over him. A cold sweat and a sick feeling in his stomach over took him, as he could hardly believe his eyes.

In the distance, cutting a wake of destruction were three funnel clouds. They were clearly out-lined in the cast of light of the power lines they snapped in half. They appeared to be getting closer.

Tommy bound up the stair well and pounded at the door. No answer. The tornadoes grew larger as the flashes silhouetted them. He knew he had to act.

The window shattered under the impact of his boot. Tommy reached inside and unlocked the door. He pounded on each individual door. Women poked their heads out of their rooms in disbelief that a man had come into their barracks against lawful orders. Tommy shouted at them to get to the bottom floor as quickly as possible.

“Tornado, tornado!” he shouted. “Get out now! Get to the first floor. Take cover!” he called out again and again.

Tommy ran down stairs to the second floor and repeated himself. There was a rush of activity. Men were racing for the nearest exit. He could hear the echoing of their boots on the steel grate step outside. He followed close behind.

The wind was vicious and unforgiving. He found it hard to breath and even harder to get the door open to the bottom floor and safety.

“Everyone, in the hallway,” Tommy screamed as loud as he could. The roar of the wind nearly drowned out the sound of his voice as he continued to shout instructions, “Lay down, now!”

All around them, they could hear glass shattering and wood breaking. Tommy could hear someone saying, “The Lord’s Prayer,” in the huddled mass of humanity hiding on the hallway floor.

Then the barracks shook as if the wind had picked each brick up one by one in rapid succession and laid them back down. The building heaved, and then it groaned.

Then there was silence

They remained huddled in the cramped hallway in complete silence and the darkness of the night. Soft crying and whispers could be heard.

“O’Gorman, Smith?” Tommy asked, breaking the silence.

“Yeah,” answered one of then the other.

“Keep everyone right here—I’m going for help,” Tommy directed.

“Okay,” O’Gorman with his soft Irish Brogue called back as Tommy headed for the exit. He had to push hard as the steel frame of the stairs had been ripped away from the wall and partly blocked the door from opening. He slipped passed the twisted metal.

There was a beam of light in the distance. “Over here,” he called out,

“Tommy! Is that you?” A voice replied back

“Yes sir! Frank?” Tommy responded. It was Sergeant Joseph. He rushed up to meet him.

“You okay?” he asked.

Tommy nodded his head yes to the question. “We’re all down on the first floor. The stair way is damaged,” I reported.

He told Tommy to turn around and take a look at the building. He lifted his flashlight up and ran it along the top of the building.

The lump in Tommy’s throat made it hard to swallow. The third floor was missing and the middle section of the second floor was torn away and lay in a pile of rubble on the ground stretching out into the parking lot.

Later that week, a Board of Inquiry was convened. They wanted to know if any lawful orders had been violated when Tommy entered the women’s dormitory by force. He stood before the Board and admitted that he had kicked in the window and had run through the third floor. Tommy also told the Board that he knew he was forbidden from entering that floor.

Upon his admission, the Board had no other choice but to request two Article Fifteens, which is non-judicial military punishment. The first one was for willfully damaging and destroying government property. The second one was for disobeying a lawful order from a superior officer.

“You know I don’t want to do this to you,” Captain Smith said as he laid the paper work out on his desk.

“Yes, sir,” Tommy said.

“If it was up to me I’d give a commendation for saving those women’s lives,” the Captain continued.

Again, Tommy said, “Yes, sir.” Then the Captain handed Tommy his pen. He quickly signed the Articles and came back to attention.

The Captain cleared his throat and shouted “Attent-hutt!” Everyone snapped too. Then he said, “I salute you.” With that he raised his right hand to the brow of his eye.

Momentarily puzzled to have an officer salute him, Tommy looked over to Sergeant Joseph who had turned and was saluting as well.

Tommy raised his hand in full salute and shouted “Sir, thank-you, sir!”

Yesterday was the funeral for Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Kara Kelly-Borgeone, who was involved in a collision February 20. The crash did not immediately kill her.

She was placed on life-support after it was found that her brain had died from the injuries she sustained in the accident. It wasn’t until Thursday of the same week that she was taken off life-support and the rest of her body caught up with her brain.

Her organs were harvested and through that action she has possibly saved the lives of several other people in the world. Too bad she had to die to make such a great impact on a few hundred strangers’ lives.

Back in 2006 Kara was involved in a shooting after she and her partner attempted to arrest a parole. At the time she was working for Nevada Parole and Probation or perhaps Washoe County either way when the parole attempted to take her pistol out of her holster a struggle started.

The parolee was shot in the head during the struggle, but kept charging her. She was forced to shoot the man in the chest three times.

He later died at the hospital.

It was the first and only time I ever spoke to her. I remember thinking that Kara was both beautiful and tough.

What will be interesting to learn is how come she had to die. The state is looking at the accident itself.

Yes, that did kill her but why was she rolling Code-3 north on Pyramid Highway to begin with?

A call had come in about a mysterious plastic cooler that the employees saw about 100 feet or so from their store. The store in question is Terrible’s, at the corner of Pyramid and La Posada Drive, in an on­ going construction zone.

When the Consolidated Bomb Unit arrived on scene and blew the suspicious container up, they discovered it held a core sample of concrete. Contractors place these samples in these containers, tape them shut and label them to learn how the concrete is curing.

This is where the state ought to investigate. In my estimation, Kara died for little more than a piece of concrete and the over zealous wish to blow the hell cut cf something.

Comfort food; that’s what I need at this moment.

It comes after I watched hundred’s of law enforcement escort a fallen Bureau of Indian Affairs officer to her final resting place. To see the line of every kind of police , sheriff, state, federal and tribal vehicle — with it’s blue and red lights flashing, in this sad procession is heart wrenching.

It’s made even more wrenching when the back story is known. Officer Denise Phoenix died on Valentine’s Day jus’ months after she being exposed to chemical fumes emitted from a meth-lab she and her fellow officers busted up in Montana.

This is not the worst of it.

Eight years ago, Officer Phoenix lost her two children, Justin and Shasta Surace to a driver who suffered a medical event of some sort while driving. Also killed in the crash were her brother Ronald Phoenix and the driver of the errant car, Lafayette Lee.

I was one of the first people to come upon the scene and attempt to offer aid.

Since that time she fought and eventually won a battle to have a barrier erected dividing the north and south bound roadway on which three of her family members perished. The skid marks on the barrier are proof that lives are being saved since its installation.

She passed that spot this morning — one final time along the Pyramid Highway, en route to Nixon, Nevada. There are three crosses erected in the spot where her children and brother died.

She also passed by the barrier that she was so instrumental in having put up to save lives.

Currently, a request is before Nevada’s U.S. Senator Harry Reid to have that section of the Pyramid Highway between Sparks Boulevard and Highland Drive to the north and Golden View Drive to the south named in her honor. It would be fitting for this courageous officer who did so much for this community and lost so much at the same time.

Yes, I need some comfort food to nourish the sadness I feel for Officer Phoenix’s family. Then perhaps a good cry as well.

Tommy and Adam visited Grandpa every year when it was time to gather the hay. The summer was no exception. Except that they got in an awful lot of trouble that summer. They had lots of help from each other.

Adam talked Tommy into doing the darnedest thing. He talked him into sneaking into Mr. Breedon’s watermelon patch…in broad daylight! Adam offered Tommy a bit of his wisdom “Nobody would ever think we’d be crazy enough to steal water melons in the middle of the day.” Tommy took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

They crept and sneaked and belly crawled their way into the patch. They found the biggest, sweetest watermelon they had ever laid their eyes on. It was so big that, it took both of them to pick it up. Then they started to sneak out.

Click! Click!

Adam took off at a dead run. He left Tommy standing there, balancing that big old eye-popping watermelon in his arms. Tommy was hanging onto it for dear life.

Bang! Bang!

Later that evening, after Grandpa cleaned the rock salt out of Tommy’s hide and tanned Adams, they sat down to dessert and a quiet conversation. “Well, boys, guess you learned a thing or two today.” Grandpa said. It was a statement more than a question.

“Yes, sir,” they responded together. Neither boy could find the courage to look Grandpa in the eye, because each knew that they had done a bad thing. Stealing was wrong.

Grandpa cleared his throat and said, “Never under estimate the number of nobody’s in the world, boys. Nobody can suddenly become somebody especially if you’re making off with his prize melon. Understand?”

The boys replied, “Yes. Sir”

“Also, don’t ever expect your brother to bail you out of trouble that you got yourself into. He could end up leaving you holding that melon. Correct?” Grandpa continued.

“Yes, Grandpa,” they said in one voice.

Grandpa chuckled out loud and then concluded, “Finally, Tommy, you should have ducked when you heard the ‘click-click’ while stealing that melon. Now, pass your Grandpa another piece, Tommy would you?”

O Columbine, lovely purple flower,
Light like the last morning star;
Bright as the rising evening star;
Come unto those in this needed hour
With beauty, comfort near and far,
Bringing forth Christ’s healing power.

There are times when I just want to write. It doesn ‘t matter what the subject is or if I know all the facts.

It ‘s just a case of needing to write. Many times I am hit by what I called the ‘writing bug’ late at night, after everyone including myself has laid down for the night. It is difficult to say why this is.

In all honesty, I thought writing would be my ticket upward in this world ever in need of more and more information. However I’m still a weekend news reporter with very little  to show for picking up his pen save middle age, which comes on me quickly.

When I look around, I’ve come to the conclusion that having good communication and reasoning skills are not enough. Now I wish I had learned to work with my hands repairing engines or doing piece-work in some factory.

Certainly, neither of those two jobs would have been as satisfying as seeing or hearing my words being put to use, but at least I might feel somewhat accomplished . Right now I don’t feel accomplished at anything, especially when I see others my age and younger moving ahead of me in their chosen career fields.

A few years ago I was attack for my thoughts and beliefs. I was accused of being unethical; however it anyone were to truly take the time to dig down beyond all the crap that has been said of me, they ‘d find people who were and remain afraid of being discovered for having no position other than to attack others .

No, I didn’t take any of the rhetoric seriously. How can one?

These sorts of’ people value very little in themselves and only feel good when they think they ‘ve hurt others. All they managed to do was get me fired from a very short­ sighted liberal newspaper .

For that I’ll take credit alone. None of these people are important enough to have caused such a thing with their twisting of sentences and out-and-out lying.

And most of what they said and did was exactly that fabrication by rephrase .

But rather than run and hide, I have a great desire to continue writing . This is what I enjoy, though there is very little fame or fortune in it.

This is when I am at my happiest.

Perhaps someday I will find a greater reward than a part­ time job or working for a mediocre company. Maybe one day I’ll find that just-right relationship where they actually value my ability to connect words and thought together in a cohesive sentence.

My 15-year-old son, Kyle made three very interesting and pointed statements today. I found them to be both funny and true.

And I thought I’d share them with you.

My new cell phone gives me problems from time to time. I handed it to Kyle this afternoon to fix.

He resolved my difficulty within seconds, handing my phone back to me and saying, “If it weren’t for us kids, you parents would be technologically challenged.”

While on our way to the store, Kyle and I were listening to a radio talk show. They were discussing all the new laws in the Golden State. That prompted this response from him, “As I understand it, Nevada is the new west coast since California doesn ‘t think the U.S. exists .”

As we were checking out, I told Kyle to go grab himself a soda pop. He told ·me, “I can’t have a soda even though I want one because I gotta keep myself clean.”

Each one got a laugh out of me.

Working until midnight and crashing in one of the production studios to sleep, I was barely asleep before it was time to get up to be on-air by 6 a.m. My workday ended at 12:15 p.m. but the wife had me run a chore for her; wash the car.

Simple little task.

Don’t bet on it! That turned into a real fiasco.

The wash I normally use used to allow customers to buy gas and a car wash at the pump. They stopped that practice and I ended up going to the bank to get cash.

At the first bank the ATM was out of money. I’ve never heard of such a thing!

It’s a money-operation and there’s no cash in the machine! Give me a friggin’ break.

So it’s off to the next closest bank.

The route is right through the stupidest drivers in the world. People with their left blinker lights on, moving right and cutting me off. Stuff like that.

But I got the money, I got the car washed and I got home in time. It is time for bed, I’m thinking.

NOT!

My bed has been pulled apart and the sheets are being washed. Bless my son’s God-mother, but I wish she would have had better timing.

The sheets are tumbling dry now and soon I’ll lay down. Sleep which seemed so far away is now so close.

Tomorrow morning when I roll out of bed at 3:30, I’ll probably not even remember all this.

It’ll be later in the morning that I think about how my day got twisted by a car wash request and an ATM and I’ll laugh at it.

My appointment at the VAMC went well. That is to say I didn’t have to stand around or sit around all that long to see my doctor. Nor did I get a ‘script change as I thought I was going to get, so no long wait at the pharmacy either.

Instead, I had to try and explain to my MD why I refuse to take commercial flights since September 2001. He thought it was out of some sort of phobia or something.

Not at all!

It took me nearly all of an hour to get him to understand that the decision to not fly in a purposeful choice. I based this choice on the actions of the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Safety Administration, as I have researched and learned of those two agencies screw ups over the years.

First, neither one target the correct people when it comes to searches. Grandma isn’t the threat and neither is the big busted blonde.

The profile is a younger male of dark complexion, well groomed and intelligent. I’m the whitest guy I know and I had to undergo a physical search.

Next are the things they call weapons or potential weapons. In my book my ball-point pen is more of a threat than the unbagged three-once bottle of shampoo.

They’ll take the shampoo and leave the pen. And have you ever seen how a woman’s high heel can pierce the skin?

Now they have the express system, where a person can undergo a background check and if they pass, they can jus’ by-pass the security lines. What a bunch of crap!

The background check is done by the FBI.

This is the same agency that allowed a woman to work for them in a classified position for nearly five years even though she a had fake marriage license and fake documentation to be in the U.S.  Boy, do I trust them to do the background check properly…not!

Yeah, I can go through the security check points and get on a passenger jet. It’s not a phobic reaction to the possibility of dying.

Instead I jus’ don’t want to go through a stupid procedure that only “creates” a “feeling” of public safety. This is MY choice and I don’t need any meds to help me with it.

My doctor still doesn’t fully understand what I am saying about all this. Instead, I ended up walking away — thinking of myself as obsessed with my need to be correct.