Ron Brown lauded as a dedicated public servant who became a victim

Today marks the 17th anniversary of the death of former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown who was killed in a plane crash during a trade mission in Croatia.  Brown was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. Many deemed that Brown was purposely killed during his international assignment along with 34 others.

“Ron Brown embodied the values and the ideals, that sense of possibility, that is at the heart of the American story,” remarked Pres. Obama about Brown who served in the U.S. Army in Korea. Brown also was the first African American chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the first African American to become U.S. Secretary of Commerce. 

At his death, Brown was 54 years old.

In Jack Cashill's 2004 book "Ron Brown's Body: How One Man's Death Saved the Clinton Presidency and Hillary's Future," a plot unfolds of  "sex, lies, corruption, and racial politics of the Clinton Administration as seen through the troubled career and even more troubling death of Ron Brown." 

Cashill, an Emmy-award-winning writer with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue, investigates the life and times of Ron Brown. "...Brown was both exploiter and exploited, victimizer and ultimately victim, the classic 'man who knew too much.' "