The Lash story has been set up specifically to make it clear that it had to be a murder-suicide, like a ‘locked room’ murder mystery:

“But shortly before 10 p.m. Thursday, police said, Lash and Zackula had a dispute and Zackula ran from the house and called police. Zackula was not hurt, but the dispute was physical enough that police later obtained a warrant charging Lash with domestic assault, Officer Richard Henry said.

Lash never knew about the warrant. When three or four officers arrived at 9:55 p.m., Henry said, they knocked on several doors but got no answer. Within 10 minutes, while trying to decide their next move, the officers heard two gunshots from inside the house, Henry said.

Not knowing who was shooting - and who was being shot at - the officers called for help. Teams of tactical officers and hostage negotiators were summoned, Henry said. Black-clad officers with rifles darted across front lawns, a command post bus was brought in, and police dispatchers phoned neighbors with urgent instructions: Turn off all lights and get in the basement, neighbors said.

After phone calls failed, a police negotiator began circling the house with a bullhorn, two neighbors said. The negotiator gently pleaded with Lash, ‘Bill, we need to know you're okay,’ the neighbors said. ‘Please give us a sign. Answer the phone. Turn on a light.’

The negotiator tried to reach Lash for more than two hours. ‘He was incredibly compassionate,’ said one neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

After 1 a.m., police released a remote-controlled robot, equipped with a video camera, so police could gauge what was happening inside. The neighbor said the robot rolled slowly down Pathfinder Lane, up the Lash driveway and into the house.

Finally, at 3:50 a.m., officers went inside and found Lash and his son, both dead from gunshots to the upper body.”

So by 10:05 p. m., the police knew that two shots had been fired in a house containing a possibly violent man with a gun and his young autistic son, a man who they knew had barricaded himself in the house (by the way, apparently a completely out of character move), and they wait almost six hours before entering the house? The ‘incredibly compassionate’ negotiator had to know he was talking to a dead man. The boy could have been bleeding to death during this time. I find the story far too convenient a way to prove that it had to be suicide.

Someone is making sure that there is no one left alive to disclose the names of the guilty. Look for a few more ‘suicides’ and ‘accidents’ before this is done.

______________________

The Wayne Madsen Report

Wayne Madsen

Editorial note: How many more suspicious deaths will it take before Americans wake up to the fact that their country has been taken over by a criminal syndicate that involves the Bushes and Cheneys and their close friends and business partners?

William H. Lash III is the second high-ranking former African-American official and Harvard alum in the George W. Bush administration to die under suspicious circumstances within the last year. Thursday night, Fairfax, Virginia police responded to an domestic incident at the McLean, Virginia residence of Lash, who served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Market Access and Compliance. He served in the position from 2001 to 2005 and was responsible for a special task force that assisted companies in securing contracts in U.S.-occupied Iraq.

Lash, who was 45 and a New Jersey native, was a high-powered Washington attorney who served a counsel to the U.S. International Trade Commission during the Reagan administration. Before and after leaving the Bush administration, he taught law at George Mason University. According to today's Washington Post, police were called a little before 10 p.m. by Lash's wife, Sharon Zackula. She claimed she and Lash had a dispute and she ran from their home. The story claims that sometime between "shortly before 10 p.m." and 9:55 p.m., police obtained a warrant for the arrest of Lash for domestic assault. Police arrived at 9:55 p.m. at Lash's front door. The police then knocked on the door for ten minutes before they heard two gunshot wounds from inside the home. Police then used bullhorns to ask Lash to phone them. Police also instructed neighbors to turn off all their lights and go to their basements. That decision prevented any witnesses from noticing anyone fleeing the scene of the shooting.

At 1:00 a.m., Friday morning, police sent a robot unit into the home. It was not until 3:50 a.m., almost six hours after the shooting was heard, that police discovered the bodies of Lash and his 12-year old autistic son dead in a first floor bedroom from gunshot wounds to the upper body. Police claimed that Lash shot his son and then himself. Neighbors and colleagues expressed shock at the news, all saying that Lash showed no signs of tension or depression and that was very devoted to his son.

Lash was also an adviser to the corporate public relations firm Brunswick Group, LLC, a U.K.-based firm that once employed Clinton State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin as a director of its political affairs unit. Brunswick has been known by a number of names, including Lincoln Research Ltd. Its holding company is based in the Channel Islands. Brunswick represents the Royal Bank of Scotland and paid 5,000 pounds to the Labor Party in return for its clients to receive tickets to dine with top Labor politicians. Two recent incidents involve Brunswick's Royal Bank of Scotland client and the cash payments to the Labor Party. On July 12, Neil Coulbeck, a Royal Bank of Scotland officer and a witness in the Enron case, allegedly committed suicide in an East London park. Also, Tony Blair's chief Labor Party fundraiser, Lord Michael Levy, was arrested in a police investigation of the sale of peerages and royal honors in return for political donations.

Sharon Zackula is an attorney with the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). Last September 7, Eric Miller, a prominent African-American attorney who had served as Assistant Chief of Litigation for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), was found partially burned and beaten to death in his automobile parked in a seedy neighborhood in Washington. Colonel Ted Westhusing, the U.S. Army's top ethics expert and West Point professor, was found dead in a Baghdad trailer of a supposed self-inflicted gunshot wound while investigating contract fraud by U.S. Investigations Services. Last month, Phillip Merrill, Dick Cheney's handpicked head of the U.S. Export-Import Bank at the time of dubious loans to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq supposedly committed suicide with a shotgun and threw himself into the Chesapeake Bay with an anchor tied around his legs.

________________________________

DC mayoral candidate murdered

TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Not suspicious at all! Associated Press Jul 9th - 5:55am:

"D.C. police are still investigating the death of a wheelchair-bound man with aspirations of being the mayor of Washington.

Officers found 44 year-old Chris Crowder in the 600 block of Emmanuel Court in Northwest early on Saturday morning.

Police say Crowder, who had just filed papers to run for mayor as a member of the D.C. Statehood Green Party, was shot several times and was found laying not far from his wheelchair.

An unidentified man was found shot several times nearby.

He is in critical condition at a local hospital.

Crowder was one of 12 candidates who had filed a petition to run for mayor.

D.C. Council member and mayoral candidate Adrian Fenty tells the Washington Post that Crowder was someone who, "stood out because of his energy and his passion."

________________________________

DC activist slain - random murder or targeted killing?

qrswave
The Truth Will Set You Free

If 9/11 has taught me anything, it's that I must question everything.

Three assailants who cut the throat of an aspiring politician from Britain killed him and tried to rape his female companion early yesterday in the driveway of a Georgetown mansion, police reported, after the couple had returned from a night at the movies.

The victim, Alan Senitt, 27, a Jewish activist and volunteer for former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner, died at the scene, police said. The woman, whom police declined to identify, was not injured.

* * *

According to police and others, the attack occurred shortly after 2 a.m. as Senitt was seeing the woman home. The couple walked north on 31st Street NW, then turned west toward Wisconsin Avenue on Q Street NW, where the woman lives.

The two were rummaging in the trunk of a car when they were approached by three men wielding a gun and a knife. Police said Piper, who had the gun, grabbed the woman and began dragging her down the driveway. Out of view of his companions, he tried to pull off her clothes, police said. The attacker made a comment "in reference to his intent to commit a sexual assault," said Lt. Robert Glover of the police department's violent crimes branch, which is handling the investigation.

Meanwhile, the other two assailants grabbed Senitt, stabbed him and slashed his throat.

As Senitt lay dying, the three men fled with the woman's purse. The woman ran onto Q Street, flagged down a taxi and begged for help.

"She came in the street and was yelling, 'Stop! I need help! We got robbed!' " said taxi driver Ayalew Haile, who returned to Georgetown yesterday to retrieve his cab, which was trapped behind police tape for much of the day. "I stopped because you have to help someone. My passenger called the police for her."

Police received the 911 call at 2:18 a.m. and responded with paramedics almost immediately. They found several people trying to help Senitt, Glover said, "though those efforts were fruitless." Senitt's body was taken to the medical examiner's office.

The woman, a former babysitter for developer Herb Miller, lives in Miller's basement apartment. She was too upset to talk to reporters[snip].

A number of things don't add up. First, why would the attacker try to pull off the woman's clothes, DECLARE that he's about to rape her, yet suddenly stop and only take her purse? And how is it that in the process, this woman miraculously 'didn't get hurt?'

And as she runs for help, she screams 'we've been robbed' and not 'they slit his throat!' or 'call an ambulance!'

So, who is Alan Senitt and who might want him dead?

"He was a serious contender for mainstream political life. He was up and coming. He would have been brilliant, I'm sure of it," said Danny Stone director of the Co-Existence Trust, an organization which Mr Senitt was previously director of and which worked towards dialogue between Jews and Muslims.

We may never know whether this murder was random or politically motivated and orchestrated to blend into a landscape littered with crime. But one thing is sure - these are very dangerous times.

__________________________

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