michael connell

A pioneer of online political campaigning in the 1990s, Michael Connell played an important role in the Republican political campaign that helped George W Bush gain the White House in 2000.

He helped build the IT architecture of the Bush administration and a number of other high profile Republican campaigns. But his work brought with it controversy, especially when important government emails started to go missing. Then, following Bush’s victory in the presidential election in 2004, Connell was alleged to have been part of an effort by Republicans to rig the vote in the state of Ohio.

It was shortly after he was deposed in a lawsuit pertaining to electoral fraud and civil rights violations that Connell died when his single engine airplane crashed en route from Washington, DC to Akron, Ohio. The Internet was soon abuzz with conspiracy theories - was this a simple air accident or was it a political hit?

A copy of the NTSB report into the crash of Michael Connell’s Piper Saratoga aircraft can be found here: http://www.aopa.org/asf//ntsb/narrative.cfm?ackey=1&evid=20081223X12815

Attribution for music used in this episode:

Assassinations Podcast Theme Music (Intro, Outro, and Transitions) written and performed by Graeme Ronald

“Purple Planet Music - Zonal Waves (3_01) 70bpm” by Purple Planet is licensed under CC BY 4.0 / A derivative from the original work