The Start of a Dialog

I wrote Choosing Truth to explore the issues surrounding Paul Wellstone's death in a more entertaining fashion than a non-fiction piece or an essay. I explore the issues involved through characters. Claire Matheson, the university professor who comes to believe Wellstone was assassinated, is a skeptic at first. Only when she looks at the facts about the crash and things do not add up, does she then, first question the official story, and then generate a theory about what really happened.

I wrote this script as entertainment, but it certainly takes a strong position on a serious matter. I look at it as a starting point in a discussion that needs to occur about the plane crash that killed Senator Wellstone. As Claire learns more, she questions more, and she questions why the questions that should have been asked were not. For example, Why was the FBI looking for the black box (cockpit voice recorder) for 36 or so hours before saying there was no black box? Why was the crash blamed on the weather almost immediately even when another airplane was in the air a short time later? Why did that explanation sink once it became easier to just blame the pilots?

These are questions to begin a discussion about the crash. One thing the script did not bring out that I dealt with in my personal life was how quick people were to dismiss the possibility that a conspiracy may have occurred. People were quick to accept that the crash was just an accident. Even those who usually have open minds about sinister operators in our government were quick to dismiss any political malfeasence. Is it just too hard to believe that that could have occurred?

A close friend of mine, hearing me suggest that this may have been an assassination said: "Go write a story." That's what I did. And though it is based on a real incident, and most of the information was culled from original source materials in newspapers, magazines, radio programs, and internet-based media, it is a work of fiction.

Much better resources exist for looking at the actual facts of the matter, most notably American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone by James Fetzer and Four Arrows. I see Choosing Truth as a compliment to this and a good place to start a dialog and discussion about the death of Paul Wellstone. I encourage those interested to read it and then dig deeper to learn more.