Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) is demanding answers from the Trump administration over a mysterious plane crash he alleges the U.S. military “definitely had a role to play” in, a fight one journalist called Monday a “fight worth watching.”
On May 14, a medical transport aircraft crashed into the side of a mountain after its pilots “got disoriented,” Wired first reported – a crash that coincided with nearby military testing at the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. All four occupants died.
While the crash has not been decisively linked to the nearby military testing, Vasquez launched an effort to get to the bottom of the incident with a set of demands issued to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Specifically, Vasquez requested a joint briefing between Transportation and Defense officials to take questions regarding the incident.
Writing in an analysis published Monday on her Substack, veteran journalist Alissa Valdes-Rodriguez called Vasquez’s demand the “one accountability mechanism actually in motion.”
“Whether that letter becomes a hearing, or evaporates into the Pentagon’s favorite phrase – cannot comment while under investigation – [it’s] the fight worth watching,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote.
She also stressed the urgency of getting to the bottom of the plane crash given the federal government’s years-long reluctance to acknowledge the health impact on New Mexico residents from nuclear testing in the state starting in the 1940s.
“Now four coffins have come off a mountain, a month of wildfire has come off the same crash, and the families of Keelan Clark, Ali Kawsara, Sarah Clark and Jamie Novick have joined a long New Mexican tradition – the tradition of being what the country flies its experiments over because someone in a briefing decided nobody down there was quote important enough to protect,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote.
“We have seen this movie before. We know how it ends when Washington decides our sky and land near White Sands is a place to test a weapon, even with people there. We know because the mushroom cloud is still in our mothers’ and grandmothers’ medical records.”
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