More Flight 3407 Cover Up: NTSB says Plane didn’t dive, landed flat on house

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29194109/
CLARENCE, N.Y. – The plane that crashed on a house in New York state landed flat on it and was pointed away from the airport where it was supposed to land, an investigator said Saturday. The Continental Connection Flight 3407 did not dive into the house, as initially believed, said Steve Chealander, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.
…this reneges on multiple eyewitness immediate reports that the plane nose dived into the ground. The GREATEST evidence that the plane took a vertical or nose dive trajectory down (the smoking gun) is the fact that only a SINGLE house was destroyed by the plane. Had the plane taken a more “flat” or horizontal trajectory as the media is trying to lie right now, then one would expect damage to MULTIPLE houses before crashing. Here is an excerpt of one of the many initial reports directly refuting the claim the plane did not nose dive:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=6869019&page=1
Authorities say 50 people are dead after a Continental Express plane crashed into a suburban Buffalo home Thursday night and erupted in flames just five minutes before it was scheduled to land. Continental Express #3407, operated by Colgan Air, was flying from Newark, N.J., to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport when it crashed into a single-family home at around 10:20 p.m., killing all of the passengers onboard and one person on the ground. One woman and a child managed to escape from the burning house, said authorities, and are being treated for minor injuries at a local hospital. At a press conference early Friday morning, Chris Collins, the Erie County executive, said the plane appears to have “dove directly on top of the house.” “It was a direct hit,” said Collins. “It’s remarkable that it only took one house. As devastating as that is, it could have wiped out the entire neighborhood.” Collins said the plane had not reported any trouble before the crash and described the weather at the time of the crash as “typical” and “nothing unusual.” He added that it was snowing lightly and there was moderate wind in the area.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/14/earlyshow/main4802791.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/13/national/main4798963.shtml

Des Forges GRD ‘72, human rights expert, killed in plane crash

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/27712
Alison Des Forges GRD ‘72, one of the world’s leading experts on the human rights violations in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, was among the passengers killed in the commuter plane crash outside Buffalo, N.Y., late Thursday. She was 66 and lived in Buffalo. Her death was confirmed by Human Rights Watch, the New York-based organization for which she worked for nearly two decades as a senior adviser to its Africa division. Born in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1942, Des Forges wrote her doctoral thesis about Rwanda and began working for Human Rights Watch in the 1980s. She spent four years interviewing organizers and victims of the Rwandan genocide and testified at 11 trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as an expert witness. According to Human Rights Watch, Des Forges “dedicated her life and work to understanding the country, to exposing the serial abuses suffered by its people and helping to bring about change.” “There was no one who knew more and did more to document the genocide and to help bring the perpetrators to justice,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. Considered the definitive account of the Rwandan tragedy, her book, “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda,” was published in 1999 – the same year the MacArthur Foundation awarded Des Forges a “genius grant” for her work. Des Forges’ last research work for Human Rights Watch, still unfinished, was a report about the recent killings in eastern Congo. After spending some time in Europe, Des Forges was returning home to Buffalo, where she lived with her husband, Roger Des Forges GRD ‘71, a history professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Des Forges is also survived by a daughter, a son and three grandchildren. Continental Connection Flight 3407, from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo, crashed about six miles short of the airport in Buffalo during a light snowfall on Thursday night. Des Forges was among 44 passengers who were killed; four crew members, an off-duty pilot and one person on the ground also died.